Earlier quoted context omitted.
So many interesting languages, so little time :(
A language Don Juan, are you?
It is a curse; I'd love to settle on a nice language, but the hunt is just so exhilarating!
Rust 0.2 released
81–90 of 97 posts
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I found "crust" to be rather counter-intuitive. I think one of the reasons that bugs me is that "ret" and "mut" don't have any intrinsic meaning in English, but my brain insists on reading "crust" as if it were a word. I'd personally have gone with "rustc".
"rustc" is how you invoke the compiler from the command line, that's no good. :) I do seem to remember that the devs were passively soliciting ideas for a better name for this keyword. The great thing about a language at this stage is that if this really bothers you, then you can petition to have it changed!
How about externc, hinting at C++'s extern "C" for C++ code that will be visible (unmangled) to C code?
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ada is good because of useful typing (such as the ability to say "apples and oranges are both represented as signed 32 bit integers, the allowable range for apples is 0..5, and you can't mix them"), strong control over data representation, standardized extensions for on-the-metal programming and hard real time, built in synchronous message passing concurrency, and just generally being an awesome language. It's also g…
My personal guesses why Ada lost: In (Western) academia was a massive dislike of Ada because of its DoD roots and NATO applications, so they didn't use it for teaching. And hackers disliked it because it was a committee-designed language and it's pretty restrictive (even paternalistic) and directed toward mediocre programmers (a good decision for systems that run over decades and have big, changing teams assigned to…
I think if there was a good, free version of an Ada compiler that had a permissive open-source license, then people would be using it.
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ada is good because of useful typing (such as the ability to say "apples and oranges are both represented as signed 32 bit integers, the allowable range for apples is 0..5, and you can't mix them"), strong control over data representation, standardized extensions for on-the-metal programming and hard real time, built in synchronous message passing concurrency, and just generally being an awesome language. It's also g…
My personal guesses why Ada lost: In (Western) academia was a massive dislike of Ada because of its DoD roots and NATO applications, so they didn't use it for teaching. And hackers disliked it because it was a committee-designed language and it's pretty restrictive (even paternalistic) and directed toward mediocre programmers (a good decision for systems that run over decades and have big, changing teams assigned to…
> In (Western) academia was a massive dislike of Ada because of its DoD roots and NATO applications, so they didn't use it for teaching.
DARPA funds lots of computer science research, so I doubt academic dislike of DOD is a big factor.
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
This irks me to bits. You need to be an ambidextrous octopus to get a { out of my (non-US) keyboard.
The problem is many languages are designed on US keyboards. And even engineers who are otherwise mindful of unicode and other internationalization problems, may trivially forget what keys may not be on other keyboards. I suppose your best bet may be to muck a bit with the key bindings of your particular text editor. IMO, I already swap some keys around to make () and {} more usable.
I wonder which programming language's syntax requires the least shifting? On my (en-US) keyboard, the following punctuation does not require shifting:
`-=[]\;',./
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pertinent to what I said? Garbage collection is the biggie. Utterly unacceptable in systems work.
Both Rust and Go have GCs. It is true that Rust has mostly per-thread GC, which should help to curb performance concerns quite a bit. And Rust aims to have more explicit control over where things are allocated. But it's still a GCed language. Whether GC is acceptable in systems work depends on what you construe as "systems work" (kernels and GC don't mix nicely; browsers and GC is OK if you're careful).
Rust allows unsafe code and pointer use in the absence of GC.
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it is supposed to be for whatever replaces Firefox/Gecko.
Odd, because their FAQ is quite clear about this: > Are you going to use this to suddenly rewrite the browser and change everything? Is the Mozilla Corporation trying to force the community to use a new language? > No. The Mozilla Corporation's involvement is at the labs level: the group concerned with doing experiments. The point is to explore ideas. There is currently no plan to incorporate any Rust-based technolog…
In a previous post about Rust on HN one of the Mozilla devs claimed that Rust was a result of headaches they've had building Firefox. The language isn't to be used in Firefox, but to (eventually, some day) to be used in whatever supersedes Firefox. They would be starting from scratch. And this is probably very very far in the future. Why else would Mozilla develop a new language if they didn't intend to use it for their products?
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
"rustc" is how you invoke the compiler from the command line, that's no good. :) I do seem to remember that the devs were passively soliciting ideas for a better name for this keyword. The great thing about a language at this stage is that if this really bothers you, then you can petition to have it changed!
How about externc , hinting at C++'s extern "C" for C++ code that will be visible (unmangled) to C code?
I actually like that a lot - relatively short, to the point, and doesn't have any conflicting intrinsic meaning.
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
This irks me to bits. You need to be an ambidextrous octopus to get a { out of my (non-US) keyboard.
The problem is many languages are designed on US keyboards. And even engineers who are otherwise mindful of unicode and other internationalization problems, may trivially forget what keys may not be on other keyboards. I suppose your best bet may be to muck a bit with the key bindings of your particular text editor. IMO, I already swap some keys around to make () and {} more usable.
Curiously though, many popular languages are created by non-English natives.
Re: Rust 0.2 released
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Odd, because their FAQ is quite clear about this: > Are you going to use this to suddenly rewrite the browser and change everything? Is the Mozilla Corporation trying to force the community to use a new language? > No. The Mozilla Corporation's involvement is at the labs level: the group concerned with doing experiments. The point is to explore ideas. There is currently no plan to incorporate any Rust-based technolog…
In a previous post about Rust on HN one of the Mozilla devs claimed that Rust was a result of headaches they've had building Firefox. The language isn't to be used in Firefox, but to (eventually, some day) to be used in whatever supersedes Firefox. They would be starting from scratch. And this is probably very very far in the future. Why else would Mozilla develop a new language if they didn't intend to use it for th…
I didn't see that post, but every other post I've seen there has been a lot of hand wringing about being forced to use this language or be shut out of Firefox development, which is very clearly not currently even in the long-term plans. They've also been very clear that people should not form indelible opinions about Rust since they expect it to continue evolving at a rapid rate.
You're right that it would be idiotic to spend the money and time to develop this if they didn't intend to use it in their products, but they've gone out of their way to make people understand that the Rust they can see today is not going to be shoved down their throats. Whether some eventual successor Rust that may or may not resemble the one we have today is used for some kind of rewrite is probably a foregone conclusion, but they clearly don't want us deciding whether to support or object based on what exists today.
I sound like I'm making a big deal out of a minor distinction, but I don't like seeing what I saw on Slashdot, which was essentially, A) Rust devs announce Rust 0.1, B) someone submits story to Slashdot saying Mozilla is forcing everyone to abandon C++ and switch to Rust in the near future, C) everyone on Slashdot complains that Rust isn't going to perform and ought to have language features X, Y, Z. This cycle misinformation/non-information is going to persist as long as we emphasize the foregone conclusion that this might be used in some kind of far-distant rewrite ahead of the actual news, which is just that 0.2 of Rust, an experimental language, came out today.