Brian Kernighan: Rust is "a pain"

Context

Brian W. Kernighan (co‑author of classic Unix and C texts) spoke at the Vintage Computer Festival East (VCF East, April 2025). During audience Q&A he was asked about Rust (and later about Nix / NixOS). The remarks were relayed by the video author identified as Lunduk / the Lunduk Journal, who points viewers to the full VCF East talk (search: “VCF East 2025 Brian Kernighan”).

Kernighan’s experience with Rust

• Caveat: Kernighan emphasized he has written only one Rust program and framed his comments with that limitation.
• Memory-safety mechanisms:
  • He described Rust’s memory-safety model as “a pain.”
  • He said he couldn’t “gro[k]” the required mechanisms for memory safety in code where memory wasn’t a practical problem.
• Tooling and ecosystem friction:
  • He characterized the support mechanisms (crates, cargo, etc.) as large, incomprehensible, and slow — paraphrased as “crates and barrels.”
• Performance and velocity:
  • He found the compiler slow and judged the generated code “slow” compared to his expectations.
• Documentation and language churn:
  • He noted that the language had changed since the last available descriptions, leaving examples and docs out of date and turning tasks that would take minutes in other languages into multi‑day efforts.
• Overall judgment:
  • He called himself probably “unduly cynical” but stated he does not expect Rust to replace C “right away.”

Mention of Nix / NixOS

When asked about Nix / NixOS, Kernighan said he had never heard of it and found that amusing.

Narrator / framing

• The video author (Lunduk / the Lunduk Journal) relays Kernighan’s remarks and acknowledges a motivation to provoke Rust and Nix advocates.
• The narrator links to the full VCF East talk for viewers to watch (search term: “VCF East 2025 Brian Kernighan”).

Reviews, guides, tutorials

None are provided or reviewed in these subtitles; listeners are directed to the full talk/video for the original source.

Main speakers / sources

• Brian W. Kernighan — Unix and C co‑author; speaker at VCF East (source of the Rust/Nix comments).
• Lunduk / the Lunduk Journal — narrator/video author who shared and commented on Kernighan’s remarks.
• Event — Vintage Computer Festival East (VCF East 2025), where the talk took place.