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As an Emacs user one could see zero gain in this effort. But new languages like Rust do benefit (I believe) from this kind of projects: new libraries may be cre
by pera 9y ago
As an Emacs user one could see zero gain in this effort. But new languages like Rust do benefit (I believe) from this kind of projects: new libraries may be create for this port that could be useful for completely new applications. Also, it's more users/testers for Rust, which is always a good thing for their community.
- omegaham 9y agoAnother thing is that having large-scale successful projects make Rust a more likely language for other people to choose when creating a new project themsleves. "It's a neat language, but no one has used it to make anything that isn't a toy" is a really common mindset for the people who make such decisions. The only way to change that mindset is for the evangelists to write software and show that yes, it is possible to write For Realsies software in that language. If that happens to be a rewrite of a successful project, fine - it's still a large project, and it'll inspire more development than someone coming out of nowhere with a project.
- rkangel 9y agoRust has always had an advantage in this respect as it was being used to write servo. "Good enough for Mozilla to write a browser rendering engine" (I believe) helped a lot of people take it seriously early on and helped build the community.