This is an experiment in submitting "classic" threads. We already have a culture of periodically resubmitting old stories, but in this case, I think that the co

This is an experiment in submitting "classic" threads. We already have a culture of periodically resubmitting old stories, but in this case, I think that the combination of the old thread and the story is what is so interesting. The original submission is, as far as I can tell, the only post-mortem on BitC, which was a research effort for a robust systems programming language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitC for more. The ensuing HN thread has even more insight, as other language designers talk about their own experiences in trying to make a better systems language. Particularly interesting is the comment from pcwalton, talking about similar difficulties with the beginning days of Rust, and how they were overcoming them.