You seem to desire both stability and a faster 1.0 release. The realistic choices are: 1. Release fast and iterate 2. Release fast and be stuck with mi

You seem to desire both stability and a faster 1.0 release. The realistic choices are: 1. Release fast and iterate 2. Release fast and be stuck with mistakes 3. Release slow Option #1 breaks stability, so that's out. Swift appears to be taking option #2 (Apple doesn't commonly break APIs, do they?), but we can't even really be sure because it hasn't been developed in the open the way that Rust has. It's possible that it's been in development as long as Rust, and we simply haven't heard about it yet. Either way, option #2 is a perfectly reasonable one to go with; it has served Java quite well (for a loose definition of fast), though it has required some creative approaches to language improvements. Rust is taking option #3. C has been around for over 40 years now. If Rust hopes to supplant it, it seems reasonable to take a few extra months (or even an extra year) to put out a solid version 1 that won't hamstring the language or force a breaking change down the line.