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Reposting my comment from Reddit, I had some Scala 3 feelings when reading the vision, I hope Rust doesn't gets too pushy with type systems ideas. That is how

by pjmlp 9mo ago

Reposting my comment from Reddit, I had some Scala 3 feelings when reading the vision, I hope Rust doesn't gets too pushy with type systems ideas. That is how we end with other ecosystems doubling down in automatic memory management with a good enough ownership model for low level coding, e.g. Swift 6, OxCaml, Chapel, D, Linear Haskel, OCaml effects,... Where the goal is that those features are to be used by experts, and everyone else stays on the confort zone.

satvikpendem 8mo ago
I doubt those languages would have the same level of traction as Rust, especially now that Rust has already gotten said traction over the past decade with even the Linux kernel using them. It's more likely that Rust will be written as today and then these extra features are added for more type safety in certain functions as like I said in another comment I doubt people are going to write type contracts for every single function (maybe LLMs will, but that's an orthogonal discussion).
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  Apparently you missed Swift. Linux kernel adoption of Rust hasn't been a smooth ride, exactly because of its type system among C folks. It is only happening because the likes of Google and Microsoft want to see it through.
  - satvikpendem 8mo ago
    Swift is not really for systems level programming like Rust and interestingly some projects like Ladybird have moved away from Swift towards Rust.
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      It certainly is for Apple, regardless of your opinion. It is all over the place in Swift documentation, WWDC sessions, and even last week on Meet the Team session, regarding on how to write safe systems programming code on Apple platforms. Ladybird should focus on what language they actually want to deliver something.
    - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
      > Swift is not really for systems level programming Apple seems to think differently. > and interestingly some projects like Ladybird have moved away from Swift towards Rust. Not really interesting after you spent some time tracking lifecycle of FOSS projects. I don't think it is a last "moving away" announcement we get from Ladybird.
Ygg2 8mo ago
Doubt Rust will ever get to implicit hell of Scala 2. If for anything, Rust isn't married to C as Scala is to Java.
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  It certainly is in what concerns ABI support, and dependency on LLVM.
  - Ygg2 8mo ago
    Scala had an unnatural dependency on Java, not JVM. I.e., imitating not just some patterns but copying its flawed interfaces. For example, Scala could express and bypass decades of cruft in the Java Collections API. Did it choose to do it? To paraphrase former Scala developer and present poker player, "If Java cut its nose, would you Scala... Oh god, stop! The blood, the blood!" Everyone who wants to talk to low-level code has to have C ABI. The equivalent Scalaism in Rust would be if Rust reimplemented the C-inspired java.util.Date. Yes. Monday should be 0, not an enum. Because C did it.
Conscat 8mo ago
My understanding is that Scala 3 came with many large breaking changes that made adoption difficult. I at least hadn't heard users complain that new features weren't desired.
palata 8mo ago
> I had some Scala 3 feelings when reading the vision, I hope Rust doesn't gets too pushy with type systems ideas. I don't know if it is true or not, but my feeling is that Scala brought a lot of new ideas. But as I read somewhere, "Scala was written by compiler people, to write compilers", and I can understand that feeling. Kotlin came after Scala (I think?) and seems to have gotten a lot of inspiration from Scala. But somehow Kotlin managed to stay "not too complex", unlike Scala. All that to say, Rust has been innovating in the zero-cost abstraction memory safe field. If it went the way of Scala, I wonder if another language could be "the Kotlin of Rust"? Or is that Zig already? (I have no idea about Zig)
- zozbot234 8mo ago
  > I wonder if another language could be "the Kotlin of Rust"? Some people would say that Swift is that language since it's potentially memory safe like Rust and is described as friendlier to novices. There's some room for disagreement wrt. the latter point.
  - palata 8mo ago
    Well many languages are memory safe. Java has been memory safe forever. Rust is the one that is memory-safe with zero-cost abstractions, right?
    - bombela 8mo ago
      Rust is also data race safe to boot.
- hocuspocus 8mo ago
  > But somehow Kotlin managed to stay "not too complex", unlike Scala. It's not really true anymore, Kotlin has slowly absorbed most of the same features and ideas even though they're sometimes pretty half-baked, and it's even less principled than the current Scala ecosystem. JetBrains also wants to make Kotlin target every platform under the sun. At this point, the only notable difference are HKTs and Scala's metaprogramming abilities. Kotlin stuck to a compiler plugin exposing a standard interface (kotlinx.serialization) for compile-time codegen. Scala can do things like deriving an HTTP client from an OpenAPI specification on the fly, by the LSP backend.

by pjmlp 9mo ago

satvikpendem 8mo ago

I doubt those languages would have the same level of traction as Rust, especially now that Rust has already gotten said traction over the past decade with even the Linux kernel using them. It's more likely that Rust will be written as today and then these extra features are added for more type safety in certain functions as like I said in another comment I doubt people are going to write type contracts for every single function (maybe LLMs will, but that's an orthogonal discussion).

pjmlp 8mo ago
Apparently you missed Swift. Linux kernel adoption of Rust hasn't been a smooth ride, exactly because of its type system among C folks. It is only happening because the likes of Google and Microsoft want to see it through.
- satvikpendem 8mo ago
  Swift is not really for systems level programming like Rust and interestingly some projects like Ladybird have moved away from Swift towards Rust.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    It certainly is for Apple, regardless of your opinion. It is all over the place in Swift documentation, WWDC sessions, and even last week on Meet the Team session, regarding on how to write safe systems programming code on Apple platforms. Ladybird should focus on what language they actually want to deliver something.
  - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
    > Swift is not really for systems level programming Apple seems to think differently. > and interestingly some projects like Ladybird have moved away from Swift towards Rust. Not really interesting after you spent some time tracking lifecycle of FOSS projects. I don't think it is a last "moving away" announcement we get from Ladybird.

Ygg2 8mo ago

Doubt Rust will ever get to implicit hell of Scala 2. If for anything, Rust isn't married to C as Scala is to Java.

pjmlp 8mo ago
It certainly is in what concerns ABI support, and dependency on LLVM.
- Ygg2 8mo ago
  Scala had an unnatural dependency on Java, not JVM. I.e., imitating not just some patterns but copying its flawed interfaces. For example, Scala could express and bypass decades of cruft in the Java Collections API. Did it choose to do it? To paraphrase former Scala developer and present poker player, "If Java cut its nose, would you Scala... Oh god, stop! The blood, the blood!" Everyone who wants to talk to low-level code has to have C ABI. The equivalent Scalaism in Rust would be if Rust reimplemented the C-inspired java.util.Date. Yes. Monday should be 0, not an enum. Because C did it.

Conscat 8mo ago

My understanding is that Scala 3 came with many large breaking changes that made adoption difficult. I at least hadn't heard users complain that new features weren't desired.

palata 8mo ago

> I had some Scala 3 feelings when reading the vision, I hope Rust doesn't gets too pushy with type systems ideas. I don't know if it is true or not, but my feeling is that Scala brought a lot of new ideas. But as I read somewhere, "Scala was written by compiler people, to write compilers", and I can understand that feeling. Kotlin came after Scala (I think?) and seems to have gotten a lot of inspiration from Scala. But somehow Kotlin managed to stay "not too complex", unlike Scala. All that to say, Rust has been innovating in the zero-cost abstraction memory safe field. If it went the way of Scala, I wonder if another language could be "the Kotlin of Rust"? Or is that Zig already? (I have no idea about Zig)

zozbot234 8mo ago
> I wonder if another language could be "the Kotlin of Rust"? Some people would say that Swift is that language since it's potentially memory safe like Rust and is described as friendlier to novices. There's some room for disagreement wrt. the latter point.
- palata 8mo ago
  Well many languages are memory safe. Java has been memory safe forever. Rust is the one that is memory-safe with zero-cost abstractions, right?
  - bombela 8mo ago
    Rust is also data race safe to boot.
hocuspocus 8mo ago
> But somehow Kotlin managed to stay "not too complex", unlike Scala. It's not really true anymore, Kotlin has slowly absorbed most of the same features and ideas even though they're sometimes pretty half-baked, and it's even less principled than the current Scala ecosystem. JetBrains also wants to make Kotlin target every platform under the sun. At this point, the only notable difference are HKTs and Scala's metaprogramming abilities. Kotlin stuck to a compiler plugin exposing a standard interface (kotlinx.serialization) for compile-time codegen. Scala can do things like deriving an HTTP client from an OpenAPI specification on the fly, by the LSP backend.