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It's not the job of the compiler to speed up and automate _editing_code_. That's the job of an IDE. And we have a unfolding story for that: Rust Language Server

It's not the job of the compiler to speed up and automate _editing_code_. That's the job of an IDE. And we have a unfolding story for that: Rust Language Server, or RLS for short, which is a package providing pluggable Rust IDE-functionality for all kinds of text editors. Besides, the change we are talking about happened 4 years ago, when Rust emphatically did NOT have any compatibility guarantees and was in a process of rapid experimentation. This has changed a whole lot – it's a stable language now, and has been for a year and a half.

Annatar 10y ago
It's not the job of the compiler to speed up and automate _editing_code_. Calling changing the syntax on unsuspecting users _editing_code_ is really a stretch of gargantuan proportions. And I don't really care whether it's the compiler, the linker, or mega_mojo-2.546-alfa5-preview18, what ever it is, it runs on a computer so that whatever is being done would be fast, automated, and therefore efficient. If the programmer knew what to do with the input, the computer should churn through it, instead of chastizing the user and making them pay for the authors' oversight. Otherwise, a computer makes no more sense than a toy does. If I want to use a computer as a toy, I'll go play a video game. The rest of the time, it's a tool, a tool to do something an order of magnitude faster than a human could. If it slows me down because it requires me to babysit it, I have a problem.
- xorxornop 10y ago
  That's all well and good if the context is unambiguous, but if it isn't, people will get used to having this done for them (or not even know that it happens at all), and then be totally perplexed. Worse, maybe then people want even ambiguous situations to be made friction-free, so the compiler must guess. Then you've got the possibility of very confusing behaviour, doubly so if the ambiguity involves any kind of polymorphism (different, possibly contradictory behaviour per type!)

Annatar 10y ago

It's not the job of the compiler to speed up and automate _editing_code_. Calling changing the syntax on unsuspecting users _editing_code_ is really a stretch of gargantuan proportions. And I don't really care whether it's the compiler, the linker, or mega_mojo-2.546-alfa5-preview18, what ever it is, it runs on a computer so that whatever is being done would be fast, automated, and therefore efficient. If the programmer knew what to do with the input, the computer should churn through it, instead of chastizing the user and making them pay for the authors' oversight. Otherwise, a computer makes no more sense than a toy does. If I want to use a computer as a toy, I'll go play a video game. The rest of the time, it's a tool, a tool to do something an order of magnitude faster than a human could. If it slows me down because it requires me to babysit it, I have a problem.

xorxornop 10y ago
That's all well and good if the context is unambiguous, but if it isn't, people will get used to having this done for them (or not even know that it happens at all), and then be totally perplexed. Worse, maybe then people want even ambiguous situations to be made friction-free, so the compiler must guess. Then you've got the possibility of very confusing behaviour, doubly so if the ambiguity involves any kind of polymorphism (different, possibly contradictory behaviour per type!)