What's even cooler than writing your own text editor or your own operating system? Building your own hardware from scratch with all the software written in Rust -- including firmware, the scheduler, and the hypervisor. Oxide Computer Company is one of the most admired companies in the Rust community. They are building "servers as they should be" with a focus on security and performance to serve the needs of modern on-premise data centers.

In this episode, I talk to Steve Klabnik, a software engineer at Oxide and renowned Rustacean, about the advantages of building hardware and software in tandem, the benefits of using Rust for systems programming, and the state of the Rust ecosystem.

About Oxide Computer Company

Founded by industry giants Bryan Cantrill, Jessie Frazelle, and Steve Tuck, Oxide Computer Company is a beloved name in the Rust community. They took on the daunting task of rethinking how servers are built -- starting all the way from the hardware and boot process (and no, there is no BIOS). Their 'On The Metal' podcast is a treasure trove of systems programming stories and proudly served as a role model for 'Rust in Production.'

About Steve Klabnik

In the Rust community, Steve does not need any introduction. He is a prolific writer, speaker, and software engineer who has contributed to the Rust ecosystem in many ways -- including writing the first version of the official Rust book. If you sent a tweet about Rust in the early days, chances are Steve was the one who replied. Previously, he worked at Mozilla and was a member of the Rust and Ruby core teams.

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Links From The Episode (In Chronological Order)

The Rust Programming Language (No Starch Press version) - The official Rust book
The Story of Rust - FOSDEM / The History of Rust - ACM - Early history of Rust
Signing Party - Story from Macintosh development
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Classic book on computer engineering
I have come to bury the BIOS - Bryan's talk on firmware
Beowulf cluster - Early parallel computing architecture
Bryan's blog post on Rust - Journey of a systems programmer to Rust
JavaOS - Operating system written in Java
D Programming Language - Systems programming language
Garbage Collection in early Rust - Historical Rust development
Removing green threads RFC - Major change in Rust's concurrency model
Hubris - Oxide's embedded operating system
Tock OS - Embedded operating system in Rust predating Hubris
cargo-xtask - Build automation for Rust projects
Hubris Build Documentation - Building Hubris using cargo xtask
Buck Build System - Facebook's build system
Buildomat - Oxide's build system
Omicron - Oxide's manufacturing test framework
illumos - Unix operating system
bhyve - BSD VM hypervisor
About Self-hosted Runners - GitHub Actions documentation
Async Drop Initiative - Rust async development
Rust Playground Example - Demonstrating helpful error when using prefix await operator
Rust Book - Modules - Rust module system
OpenAPI Specification - API documentation standard
Dropshot - Oxide's OpenAPI server framework
Axum - Web framework for Rust
Oxide Console - Oxide's web interface
Oxide Console Preview - Demo of Oxide Console using a mocked backend
Oxide RFD 1 - Request for Discussion process
Rust RFCs - Rust's design process
IETF RFCs - Internet standards process
Zig - Systems programming language
TigerBeetle - Financial accounting database written in Zig
Bun - JavaScript toolkit written in Zig
CockroachDB - Distributed SQL database used in Oxide's backplane
Oxide and Friends: Wither CockroachDB? - Discussing Cockroach's switch away from BUSL
Mozilla Public License - Oxide's default software license
Asahi Linux - Linux on Apple Silicon with Rust drivers
Buck2 - Meta's build system
Jujutsu (jj) - Git replacement
Steve's Jujutsu Tutorial - Guide to jj
Steve's blog post on not naming branches

Official Links

Oxide Computer Company - Building servers as they should be
On The Metal Podcast - Stories from the hardware/software boundary
Steve Klabnik's Blog - Thoughts on programming, Rust, and more
Steve Klabnik on Bluesky - Follow Steve for Rust updates and more

EP04: Is there a valid alternative to GA4? Analytics Lounge Talk with Adam Greco

Data Never Lie

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