4 ms·

So there has been what seems to be a lot of attention on high level performant languages lately; Rust, Go, Nimrod, D. Languages that can provide performance in

by Dewie 12y ago

So there has been what seems to be a lot of attention on high level performant languages lately; Rust, Go, Nimrod, D. Languages that can provide performance in the ballpark of C, or at least faster than a lot of other high level languages. High level languages that still keep an eye on what can be implemented efficiently. But I wonder; if these newer 'systems' (which we can define to be very performant, though not necessarily C-level performant) languages are so interesting, why don't any of the older systems languages come up? Like Free Pascal or Ada (I think this language is a 'systems' language in this sense?). Are these languages viable today, if you already can afford to use relatively new languages with all that that entails of lacking libraries etc.? Or are they dead ends? It seems weird to me that when talking about these languages, there seems to just be C/++ and these newer languages, while the older performant languages seem to not come up. Is this because they aren't suitable for most people, or because people don't know about them/forgot about them? I don't know myself, since they seldom seem to come up in discussions on forums like this.

cmrx64 12y ago
One of Rust's goals is being as fast or faster than C. Not ballpark, but actually competing. Personally I'm a big fan of Pascal, and I look to Ada sometimes for inspiration (it brought a lot to the table!), but it's quite clear historically that these languages petered off and simply won't get enough momentum to become popular again.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > One of Rust's goals is being as fast or faster than C. Not ballpark, but actually competing. I was talking about them in aggregate, and not all of them seem to have that goal.
  - cmrx64 12y ago
    And I think that that is one of the things that sets Rust apart.
chipsy 12y ago
I think the key is in whether these languages get the backing of a Big Institution. Tech people are simultaneously sensitive and oblivious to the political nature of what technologies interest them: For example, all the coverage of Swift is because Apple is backing it. All the coverage of Go is because it has some famous people behind it plus the tacit support of Google. All the coverage of Rust is because it's backed by Mozilla. But when asked directly about their interest most coders will proclaim that it's simply because the technology in these things is better, even though there were plenty of languages that had similar features and implementation quality beforehand. Nobody - especially not people caught within the politics of their own company - has the time or depth of experience to be completely confident about what they would need from a new language and why, so social signalling and appeal to authority tends to rule the day: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." And so, intentionally or no, people come out of the woodwork to position themselves as early adopters of the "next IBM." That said, in the long run I think the APIs and tooling experience matters. Free Pascal basically hangs on because Delphi did so well as a third-party environment, even though it was always marginalized on Windows for not being a Microsoft-anointed language. But the Delphi experience was related to the era of the Windows desktop application, and when the market's interest moved away from that the magic was kind of lost. Ada likewise has hung on because it has that gov/mil influence behind it - and its ecosystem is still mostly centered around commercial development environments.
- Dewie 12y ago
  In the case of Rust, I think the hype actually is well-founded, technically. It is aiming for a niche that I have seen no one claim that any other language has accomplished to fill before. So unless you know of some languages that have memory safety with no form of enforced garbage collection (it's part of the library, but completely optional), I'll say that Rust has merit on its own, no matter what organization is backing it.
  - lucian1900 12y ago
    ATS can also do that.

by Dewie 12y ago

cmrx64 12y ago

One of Rust's goals is being as fast or faster than C. Not ballpark, but actually competing. Personally I'm a big fan of Pascal, and I look to Ada sometimes for inspiration (it brought a lot to the table!), but it's quite clear historically that these languages petered off and simply won't get enough momentum to become popular again.

Dewie 12y ago
> One of Rust's goals is being as fast or faster than C. Not ballpark, but actually competing. I was talking about them in aggregate, and not all of them seem to have that goal.
- cmrx64 12y ago
  And I think that that is one of the things that sets Rust apart.

chipsy 12y ago

I think the key is in whether these languages get the backing of a Big Institution. Tech people are simultaneously sensitive and oblivious to the political nature of what technologies interest them: For example, all the coverage of Swift is because Apple is backing it. All the coverage of Go is because it has some famous people behind it plus the tacit support of Google. All the coverage of Rust is because it's backed by Mozilla. But when asked directly about their interest most coders will proclaim that it's simply because the technology in these things is better, even though there were plenty of languages that had similar features and implementation quality beforehand. Nobody - especially not people caught within the politics of their own company - has the time or depth of experience to be completely confident about what they would need from a new language and why, so social signalling and appeal to authority tends to rule the day: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." And so, intentionally or no, people come out of the woodwork to position themselves as early adopters of the "next IBM." That said, in the long run I think the APIs and tooling experience matters. Free Pascal basically hangs on because Delphi did so well as a third-party environment, even though it was always marginalized on Windows for not being a Microsoft-anointed language. But the Delphi experience was related to the era of the Windows desktop application, and when the market's interest moved away from that the magic was kind of lost. Ada likewise has hung on because it has that gov/mil influence behind it - and its ecosystem is still mostly centered around commercial development environments.

Dewie 12y ago
In the case of Rust, I think the hype actually is well-founded, technically. It is aiming for a niche that I have seen no one claim that any other language has accomplished to fill before. So unless you know of some languages that have memory safety with no form of enforced garbage collection (it's part of the library, but completely optional), I'll say that Rust has merit on its own, no matter what organization is backing it.
- lucian1900 12y ago
  ATS can also do that.