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Interesting. I would have guessed that a person contributing to what's touted as the new safest language ever, should already be familiar with prior art in the

Interesting. I would have guessed that a person contributing to what's touted as the new safest language ever, should already be familiar with prior art in the field. Otherwise one would be prone to unnecessarily reinventing the wheel... Better late than never I guess.

lukebitts 8y ago
What a weird expectation
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Yes and no. No, if one is designing something that will be state of the art, it is not unreasonable to expect that the designer knows what the previous state of the art is. But yes, it's weird. First, he's not a designer of the language. Second, there are too many languages for anyone to be intimately familiar with all of them. And third, there's just this weird bunch of very negative comments. What's up with that? You don't like Rust? (Not you, lukebitts, but the original commenter.) Fine. Don't use it. You don't like the publicity it's getting? You think your language is better? Languages are tools; they're not rock bands. Feel free to like and use yours. Rust doesn't take anything away from that. You don't like Steve? You think he's getting too much attention? He's getting it for useful, informative contributions. You want that kind of attention? Go and do likewise, rather than whining and sniping because someone else is getting attention.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Seriously? Reinventing the wheel with no reason other than ignorance sounds bad to me.
steveklabnik 8y ago
There is a lot of prior art in the field of PLT, and I did not get a graduate computer science degree, where much of this is taught. In undergrad, the closest classes were very broad overviews of programming paradigms generally. There's also the difference between being familiar and knowing things in-depth; I was previously aware of the broad strokes of Ada and many of its features, but only at a high level. The point is to deepen this understanding. (Also, I'm not on the language design team.)
- beckler 8y ago
  I saw you give a talk about bikeshedding in APIs at Great Wide Open in Atlanta a few years ago. I don't know why but after that talk I always assumed you played a role in some of the language design.
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Ah neat! I love that conference. I mean, I think that's fair: usually, people who can speak deeply about the tradeoffs made for particular syntax or features are the people who were directly involved in making the decisions. I just read the discussions between all of those people. If we didn't have the RFC process, I wouldn't have so much context.
mcguire 8y ago
Not everyone involved in Rust needs to be intimately familiar with all the prior art. Further, I'd argue that many of the people involved in Rust know as much about prior art in programming languages than anyone who has been involved in Ada in the last 20 years.

lukebitts 8y ago

What a weird expectation

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Yes and no. No, if one is designing something that will be state of the art, it is not unreasonable to expect that the designer knows what the previous state of the art is. But yes, it's weird. First, he's not a designer of the language. Second, there are too many languages for anyone to be intimately familiar with all of them. And third, there's just this weird bunch of very negative comments. What's up with that? You don't like Rust? (Not you, lukebitts, but the original commenter.) Fine. Don't use it. You don't like the publicity it's getting? You think your language is better? Languages are tools; they're not rock bands. Feel free to like and use yours. Rust doesn't take anything away from that. You don't like Steve? You think he's getting too much attention? He's getting it for useful, informative contributions. You want that kind of attention? Go and do likewise, rather than whining and sniping because someone else is getting attention.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
Seriously? Reinventing the wheel with no reason other than ignorance sounds bad to me.

steveklabnik 8y ago

There is a lot of prior art in the field of PLT, and I did not get a graduate computer science degree, where much of this is taught. In undergrad, the closest classes were very broad overviews of programming paradigms generally. There's also the difference between being familiar and knowing things in-depth; I was previously aware of the broad strokes of Ada and many of its features, but only at a high level. The point is to deepen this understanding. (Also, I'm not on the language design team.)

beckler 8y ago
I saw you give a talk about bikeshedding in APIs at Great Wide Open in Atlanta a few years ago. I don't know why but after that talk I always assumed you played a role in some of the language design.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Ah neat! I love that conference. I mean, I think that's fair: usually, people who can speak deeply about the tradeoffs made for particular syntax or features are the people who were directly involved in making the decisions. I just read the discussions between all of those people. If we didn't have the RFC process, I wouldn't have so much context.

mcguire 8y ago

Not everyone involved in Rust needs to be intimately familiar with all the prior art. Further, I'd argue that many of the people involved in Rust know as much about prior art in programming languages than anyone who has been involved in Ada in the last 20 years.