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Ferrous Systems Blog
Company blog · ferrous-systems.com/blogprogrammingsystems
Ferrous Systems Blog is the company blog at ferrous-systems.com, writing about programming and systems. Since 2018, 102 different Hacker News readers have linked it 205 times, most often “Ferrocene – Rust for Critical Systems”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Berlin based technology consultancy specialising in the Rust programming language. We offer development, implementation, training and long-term support.
Most-linked posts?
- Ferrocene – Rust for Critical Systems22 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2021-04-29
- Sealed Rust: A plan to bring Rust to safety critical software domains8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-06-05
- Qualifying Rust Without Forking7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2023-09-26
- Sealed Rust Update7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-02-13
- A lock-free ring-buffer with contiguous reservations (2019)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-06-04
- Async/Await on Embedded Rust5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-03-04
- Ferrocene: Rust toolchain to safety-critical environments5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-07-26
- The Ferrocene Language Specification4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-06-01
- Officially Qualified – Ferrocene4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-08
- We Built Our Embedded World Demo on Rust for QNX4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-03-24
What Hacker News says?
So you're saying for two of the three arbitrary rules I mentioned you need additional tooling for analysis... sure sounds like my initial point. But that's not even the point. > If anything I'd say the contrary is true, people overestimate what MISRA achieves, big chunks of it could be summarised as "Don't do things that are obviously a terrible idea". This is exactly what I mean. You're missing the point of MISRA i…
Comment linking /blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/
on “Rust Moderation Team Resigns”Submitted A lock-free ring-buffer with contiguous reservations (2019) as a story · 221 points
HN discussion> Rust can't/shouldn't be directly monitized I agree that the main implementation should not, but I could see something like a verified Rust compiler (maybe something like the "Sealed Rust" proposal) being commercialized. [0]: https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch
Comment linking /blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch
on “Rust Foundation: Hello, World”Submitted Building a lock free continuous ring buffer in Rust as a story · 200 points
HN discussionContrary to most comments so far apparently, I'm just happy to see any WASM projects secure corporate backing. I think Ferrous System wrote about it nicely[0], but having people full-time on projects like this has a tremendous positive impact. Congratulations to the whole Wasmtime team! :) [0]: https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/knurling-one-month/
Comment linking /blog/knurling-one-month/
on “Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla”Submitted Ferrocene: Rust toolchain to safety-critical environments as a story · 190 points
HN discussionIt has not been done yet, it is a work in progress, but it is being done. https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/
Comment linking /blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/
on “Linux Rust Support”Submitted Sealed Rust: A plan to bring Rust to safety critical software domains as a story · 186 points
HN discussionHave a look at the recent defmt project announced by the Knurling-rs group: https://defmt.ferrous-systems.com/ (And consider sponsoring them if this is of value to you: https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/knurling-one-month/ .)
Comment linking /blog/knurling-one-month/
on “Rust After the Honeymoon”Submitted Rust Analyzer in 2018 and 2019 as a story · 181 points
HN discussionThere's defmt which I think i think is even better (it implements basically the same thing as I have used in a commercial C++ embedded project for a few years, and was sorely missing any open source equivilent when I was first trying to implement it). formatting strings on an embedded device is pointless and wasteful. Heck, formatting log lines before they are displayed to the user is actively harmful to interpretin…
Comment linking /blog/defmt/
on “Rust After the Honeymoon”Submitted Sealed Rust Update as a story · 163 points
HN discussionHey, I saw that links to the Embedded Working Group[0], TockOS[1], and others have been posted already, and those are great places to start! My company, Ferrous Systems[2], is also focused on embedded systems development in Rust, and we are already helping companies both with embedded linux and bare-metal/RTOS projects in Rust. We're also running a conference in Berlin on April 26th-29th called OxidizeConf[3] if you…
Comment linking /
on “Writing an OS in Rust: Introduction to Paging”Submitted Compilers as Teachers as a story · 99 points
HN discussionA standard or a specification? Anyway, hopefully Ferrocene will be able to provide those folks what they need. https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/
Comment linking /ferrocene/
on “OpenSSL 3.0.7 fixes X.509 email address buffer overflows”Submitted For Complex Applications, Rust Is as Productive as Kotlin as a story · 83 points
HN discussion>> What’s the story with Rust and verification nowadays? It is in progress but likely several years to go before a MVP is released. Ferrocene [1] is the primary effort that I am aware of and that seems to be making progress towards a verified rustc suitable for safety critical work. Ferrous Systems is working with AdaCore and just released the Ferrocene Language Specification [2] to formally document the Rust subset…
Comment linking /blog/ferrocene-language-specification/
on “Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming”Submitted Defmt: Debugging Embedded Rust Without GDB (2020) as a story · 33 points
HN discussion>> If Adacore had published a full featured free compiler for students/universities by the time Ada 95 standard was published, I am sure that Ada could have occupied the space C++ takes today. Agreed. If there had been more free (gratis) or low-cost Ada compilers at that time Ada would be far less niche than it is today. There is increased interest in Ada today thanks to Rust. There is also interplay between Rust an…
Comment linking /blog/ferrocene-language-specification/
on “Six programming languages I’d like to see”Submitted Ferrocene: Road to Rust in mission and safety-critical software development as a story · 23 points
HN discussionIt's still too early for Rust in the embedded space. A lot of that space has various certification requirements that Rust doesn't meet yet, and the rest of the space tends to follow too and is very conservative. Ferrous Systems is making some good progress to make certification of Rust happen, through ferrocene[0] and other initiatives, but it will take time. The only company I know using Rust in a sort-of embedded…
Comment linking /ferrocene/
on “Purdue Starts Comprehensive Semiconductor Degree Programs in U.S.”Submitted For Complex Applications, Rust Is as Productive as Kotlin as a story · 23 points
HN discussionThere is work to get Rust qualified for safety critical domains [1]. Someone else pointed out that parts of the borrow checker have been formally proven already. Still a long road ahead, but I'm glad people are looking at it. https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/
Comment linking /blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/
on “Zig's New Relationship with LLVM”Submitted Run Rust on your embedded device from VSCode in one click as a story · 20 points
HN discussionCorrect. With an ideal standard document that describes the language, someone could build a compiler for the language from scratch and it should behave correctly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_specifica... Some example standards: C: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/ ECMAScript (Javascript): https://tc39.es/ecma262/ C++: https://isocpp.org/std/the-standard Scheme: https://schemers.org/…
Comment linking /ferrocene/
on “GCC Rust Approved by GCC Steering Committee”Submitted Sealed Rust Update: The Plan for Safety Critical Rust as a story · 20 points
HN discussionGreat! For anyone else who hasn't: https://rust-analyzer.github.io/ and https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/rust-analyzer-2019/
Comment linking /blog/rust-analyzer-2019/
on “Rust 1.40”Submitted The Ferrocene Language Specification as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI don't know if the plans have changed, but originally: https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/ > This document will be maintained as an open source work, similar to other documentation components, though may be officially published as a standards document elsewhere. The validation tests demonstrating conformance to the specification would also be maintained in Open Source as a new collection of test…
Comment linking /blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/
on “AdaCore and Ferrous Systems Joining Forces to Support Rust”Submitted Knurling-Rs Announcement as a story · 14 points
HN discussion
