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Your invocation of Rich Hickey's excellent talk is very confusing to me. It seems like you're using "simple" the way that he used "easy." What is "complected" i

Your invocation of Rich Hickey's excellent talk is very confusing to me. It seems like you're using "simple" the way that he used "easy." What is "complected" in Rust's type system? Just because there are "many" concepts, doesn't mean those concepts are entangled. I don't even agree there are that many - Rust lacks inheritance, reflection, and all of their attendant concepts. In contrast, I find the way Go builds concurrency into the language 'complex' in Hickey's sense. Similarly the way that slices and maps are parametric, but other types are not. The implicitness in interfaces. The way capitalization determines privacy. Go seems like a very 'complex' but 'easy' language. However, I'd even say I'm not convinced that I want my language to be simple. I want my system to be simple; its possible that by abstracting over an inherently complex domain, and by limiting my choices, a complex language can encourage me to create a simple system. I think ownership encourages the creation of simpler systems. I think a well factored system and a simple system are synonyms.

zbobet2012 10y ago
Binding and use of a variable is complected with its lifecycle in Rust. Which is further complected with type sytem via traits. To quote the docs: > We’ve established that when ownership is transferred to another binding, you cannot use the original binding. However, there’s a trait that changes this behavior, and it’s called Copy. We haven’t discussed traits yet, but for now, you can think of them as an annotation to a particular type that adds extra behavior. That's two additional concepts that interplay with variable binding. Two more _implicit_ concepts at that. In contrast maps being parametric doesn't affect other things (other than some syntax which is v0v). It is an additional concept to understand yes. But it's not intertwined with the other language features. > However, I'd even say I'm not convinced that I want my language to be simple. I want my system to be simple; its possible that by abstracting over an inherently complex domain, and by limiting my choices, a complex language can encourage me to create a simple system. I think ownership encourages the creation of simpler systems. I think a well factored system and a simple system are synonyms. I agree with you here (especially the later part). Again I do like Go, but I'm not fanatical on this subject. Languages can _certainly_ push you to best practices. Do Rust's? It's probably pretty domain specific.
- tatterdemalion 10y ago
  Copy is essentially operator overloading (it is a simplified, restricted, moves-or-doesn't overloading of the assignment operator), which is always implemented through traits. I agree that operator overloading complects the behavior of built in syntax with the polymorphism system, but the alternative seems worse to me. However, I don't think binding and use of a variable is 'complected' with its lifecycle. These are semantically significant concepts that I like Rust helping me manage, irrespective of their impact on machine memory. Also, I should be clear that I do web development professionally and I think the best practices Rust encourages are absolutely applicable to that space, and general application development. That those practices are also high performance in Rust is almost incidental.

zbobet2012 10y ago

Binding and use of a variable is complected with its lifecycle in Rust. Which is further complected with type sytem via traits. To quote the docs: > We’ve established that when ownership is transferred to another binding, you cannot use the original binding. However, there’s a trait that changes this behavior, and it’s called Copy. We haven’t discussed traits yet, but for now, you can think of them as an annotation to a particular type that adds extra behavior. That's two additional concepts that interplay with variable binding. Two more _implicit_ concepts at that. In contrast maps being parametric doesn't affect other things (other than some syntax which is v0v). It is an additional concept to understand yes. But it's not intertwined with the other language features. > However, I'd even say I'm not convinced that I want my language to be simple. I want my system to be simple; its possible that by abstracting over an inherently complex domain, and by limiting my choices, a complex language can encourage me to create a simple system. I think ownership encourages the creation of simpler systems. I think a well factored system and a simple system are synonyms. I agree with you here (especially the later part). Again I do like Go, but I'm not fanatical on this subject. Languages can _certainly_ push you to best practices. Do Rust's? It's probably pretty domain specific.

tatterdemalion 10y ago
Copy is essentially operator overloading (it is a simplified, restricted, moves-or-doesn't overloading of the assignment operator), which is always implemented through traits. I agree that operator overloading complects the behavior of built in syntax with the polymorphism system, but the alternative seems worse to me. However, I don't think binding and use of a variable is 'complected' with its lifecycle. These are semantically significant concepts that I like Rust helping me manage, irrespective of their impact on machine memory. Also, I should be clear that I do web development professionally and I think the best practices Rust encourages are absolutely applicable to that space, and general application development. That those practices are also high performance in Rust is almost incidental.