4 ms·
The practical and useful innovations were invented else, Rust made them mainstream.
by pjmlp 4mo ago
The practical and useful innovations were invented else, Rust made them mainstream.
- vkazanov 4mo agoYes. The biggest innovation of Rust is bringing some of the good ideas from functional programming to low level programming. I'd also say that partially exposing data flow analysis to a proframmer is new. Rust package management is quite good, and also not by any means an invention. I am still not a fan of all the ugly macro programming systems and verbose syntax in the language.
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoMacros in Rust are really ergonomically terrible. Zig's approach here is way better. The language I really want is somewhere inbetween those two languages.
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoThe borrow checker in Rust is frankly novel. Cyclone had something somewhat similar, but not the same. The broader ML-like type system in Rust is not novel, but the integration of the borrow checker -- and its move semantics more broadly -- with it... that form honestly is an innovation. And one I'd have a hard time living without at this point.
- whytevuhuni 4mo agoAnd also one I'd like to see in more languages! Especially a simpler one, closer to C.
- cmrdporcupine 4mo agoCyclone would be the closest to that I guess. RIP.
- vkazanov 4mo agoTrue! the borrow checker is a special thing. This is what i mean when i say "explicit data flow analysis". In a way this is compiler internals exposed to a programmer.