4 ms·

There have been memory-safe non-GC languages before, like Ada SPARK, but they generally disallow heap allocation altogether. If you heap allocate you get a GC.

There have been memory-safe non-GC languages before, like Ada SPARK, but they generally disallow heap allocation altogether. If you heap allocate you get a GC. There were also some academic languages, most notably ML Kit, that offered a safe no-GC region-based memory management system that has a lot in common with Rust. Also, there are academic languages like Cyclone that have a very Rust-like memory management system, but they all use GCs in the end. Still, if you know Rust, Cyclone's ideas will be very familiar.

throwaway17_17 4y ago
Small point of contention, but it’s actually Rust that has a Cyclone-like memory management system. Cyclone’s initial release was ‘02 and it finalized in ‘06.
- pcwalton 4y ago
  Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Rust invented any of those things. Cyclone was a big influence on Rust actually. We chatted with Dan Grossman early on, and his presentation "Existential Types and Imperative Languages" is the earliest description of the problem the borrow checker is trying to solve (check it out, it's a great presentation!) We stand on the shoulders of giants :)
- jolux 4y ago
  Likeness is bidirectional and doesn’t imply derivedness, though.
  - throwaway17_17 4y ago
    I feel like I stuck my foot in my mouth with my comment, but separate from that… This is an interesting perspective, I can’t think of a reason you would be incorrect, but I know I have some default intuition that likeness is most often used to imply derivedness. Also, that’s a great way to phrase what you meant.
- chriskrycho 4y ago
  You just (accidentally, no doubt!) well-actually’d someone who helped build Rust and has been invoked in it since long before 1.0. ;-p He’s aware of the direction of influence and was just saying they’re similar, not saying one influenced the other.
  - pcwalton 4y ago
    No worries, it's my fault for not being clear. The absolute last thing I want to do is to take credit for things we didn't do. Rust wouldn't exist without that academic work by Tofte, Talpin, Grossman, etc.
    - throwaway17_17 4y ago
      I said it in my sibling comment above, but to be clear, I was well aware you almost certainly knew Cyclone’s general age. I don’t want you to think I was implying or hinting anything near taking or denying credit.
  - throwaway17_17 4y ago
    I’m aware of pcwalton’s involvement in Rust. So it wasn’t accidental in any way. It was however slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I probably could have used a /s to indicate it wasn’t an attempt to score ‘I’m smart points’. I was also very aware that, despite anything else, they were almost certain to be aware of which came first. I may take serious issue with pcwalton’s assessment of the performance characteristics of OS threads vs other concurrency implementations, but fun HN arguments aside; I have never seen or heard of any lack of acknowledgement of preceding language/implementation work leading to Rust’s development. So I certainly wasnt attempting to imply any stealing or denial of credit/attribution.
fanf2 4y ago
I gather that in later versions of the ML Kit, the contents of regions were also garbage collected. The problem they had with the compile-time lifetime / region analysis was that in difficult cases an object would be given a longer lifetime than necessary, leading to space leaks

throwaway17_17 4y ago

Small point of contention, but it’s actually Rust that has a Cyclone-like memory management system. Cyclone’s initial release was ‘02 and it finalized in ‘06.

pcwalton 4y ago
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Rust invented any of those things. Cyclone was a big influence on Rust actually. We chatted with Dan Grossman early on, and his presentation "Existential Types and Imperative Languages" is the earliest description of the problem the borrow checker is trying to solve (check it out, it's a great presentation!) We stand on the shoulders of giants :)
jolux 4y ago
Likeness is bidirectional and doesn’t imply derivedness, though.
- throwaway17_17 4y ago
  I feel like I stuck my foot in my mouth with my comment, but separate from that… This is an interesting perspective, I can’t think of a reason you would be incorrect, but I know I have some default intuition that likeness is most often used to imply derivedness. Also, that’s a great way to phrase what you meant.
chriskrycho 4y ago
You just (accidentally, no doubt!) well-actually’d someone who helped build Rust and has been invoked in it since long before 1.0. ;-p He’s aware of the direction of influence and was just saying they’re similar, not saying one influenced the other.
- pcwalton 4y ago
  No worries, it's my fault for not being clear. The absolute last thing I want to do is to take credit for things we didn't do. Rust wouldn't exist without that academic work by Tofte, Talpin, Grossman, etc.
  - throwaway17_17 4y ago
    I said it in my sibling comment above, but to be clear, I was well aware you almost certainly knew Cyclone’s general age. I don’t want you to think I was implying or hinting anything near taking or denying credit.
- throwaway17_17 4y ago
  I’m aware of pcwalton’s involvement in Rust. So it wasn’t accidental in any way. It was however slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I probably could have used a /s to indicate it wasn’t an attempt to score ‘I’m smart points’. I was also very aware that, despite anything else, they were almost certain to be aware of which came first. I may take serious issue with pcwalton’s assessment of the performance characteristics of OS threads vs other concurrency implementations, but fun HN arguments aside; I have never seen or heard of any lack of acknowledgement of preceding language/implementation work leading to Rust’s development. So I certainly wasnt attempting to imply any stealing or denial of credit/attribution.

fanf2 4y ago

I gather that in later versions of the ML Kit, the contents of regions were also garbage collected. The problem they had with the compile-time lifetime / region analysis was that in difficult cases an object would be given a longer lifetime than necessary, leading to space leaks