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Comment by ekidd | Hacker News Reader

> I still argue, to every Rust user I meet, that they should turn on overflow checking in Release builds too.

Yeah, I remember when the debug-mode overflow checks were added right before Rust 1.0. There wasn't enough time remaining to thoroughly measure the performance impact of these checks in release mode or to implement compiler optimizations to reduce the cost. So IIRC, the decision was made to allow integer overflows to panic, and to turn on checks in debug mode so that the ecosystem wouldn't come to depend on the absence of checks.

But AFAICT, the debug-mode checks are basically still a placeholder for some indefinite future version of Rust that wants to fix this issue properly, if the performance cost can be made low enough. And in the meantime, you can still turn the checks on for release builds if the performance hit is acceptable for your application. I'll consider your recommendation when building binaries in the future!

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> if the performance cost can be made low enough

I think that's the wrong way to look at it. How about instead:

"Checks can be disabled if the safety cost is worth the performance increase"

The "performance case" is a false baseline. You never had that performance in the first place, because your code didn't work.

It's a fine line to walk. Performance is a deal breaker for a lot of people, whether it rightly should be of not. It doesn't matter how much safer Rust is if it's not used much.

If your goal is purely to make Rust as safe as possible, then you should advocate the view in your comment.

If your goal is to increase Rust adoption, and/or decrease the use of less safe languages for development in the future (in whichever prioritization of the two you like), then IMO the route described in ekidd's comment seems the quickest route there, IMO.

> If your goal is purely to make Rust as safe as possible, then you should advocate the view in your comment.

> If your goal is to increase Rust adoption, and/or decrease the use of less safe languages for development in the future (in whichever prioritization of the two you like), then IMO the route described in ekidd's comment seems the quickest route there, IMO.

My view is this is a false dilemma.

The "performance" case is not performance, because the benchmark is broken code. It does not work, because it is not secure/safe/reliable. It is incorrect to compare the performance of code compiled without overflow checking against code which is compiled with it enabled. They simply aren't the same program.

A correct performance comparison would be a program with manually inserted overflow checks everywhere, against a program with the overflow checks done automatically (by compiler).

Or, a performance comparison where code is selectively opted-out, where a critical path bottleneck is identified.

The same can be said of the performance comparison of "array index bounds checking". One program works, the other does not, so it isn't a fair comparison.

> A correct performance comparison would be a program with manually inserted overflow checks everywhere, against a program with the overflow checks done automatically (by compiler).

Correct is relative to the goals of the person assessing the comparison. If that person values performance over safety to enough of a degree, them a small performance loss will outweigh safety (regardless of whether you or I think this is a useful way to compare). If your goal is get people using Rust, and you believe people value performance, you can't ignore this and expect things to turn out how you like. This is the balancing act of a community and of advocates, making hard choices about what they would like to do, and what they feel is needed due to the constraints of reality.

> The same can be said of the performance comparison of "array index bounds checking". One program works, the other does not, so it isn't a fair comparison.

No, for some subset of array bounds checking, one works and the other doesn't. For the rest, they both work, because it isn't out of bounds. Whether you think people should program defensively and assume their code could fail, some will instead choose to assume they can deal with that as the programmer and choose to do so because it is more performant. You can either write those people off, or meet them half-way, and hope to escort them the rest of the way. Rust apparently chose the latter.

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