4 ms·

I know Rust has RC pointers. But I'm guessing a Rust programmer would still have to understand ownership and borrowing, since the standard library and third-par

I know Rust has RC pointers. But I'm guessing a Rust programmer would still have to understand ownership and borrowing, since the standard library and third-party libraries use those concepts. I think what I'd really like is something like C# and the .NET base class library, but AOT compiled to native code and using automatic reference counting, with some way to indicate weak references. I know that neither GC nor reference counting quite reaches the level of "don't make me think" when it comes to resource management, but given a choice between explicit resource disposal and the occasional weak reference annotation, I think I'd choose the latter. Anyway, enough ranting from me for now.

steveklabnik 12y ago
That's true, you can't totally avoid knowing about these things. But if you don't want to think about them in your code, and are okay with the price, you can. It sounds like Swift may be close to what you want, yeah?
- doublextremevil 12y ago
  Unfortunately Swift is not open source or cross platform
  - steveklabnik 12y ago
    Right, I meant solely on paradigm.
    - mseri 12y ago
      Ok, let's assume that they open it. First there will be need of a standard library. For the moment to do anything sensible you are importing Apple's Foundation Library (probably in one year time it will be better). Then I see no problem to have it server-side (both as a scripting or compiled language).
- bsaul 12y ago
  It looks to me that swift is the only language that can compete with rust if it were open sourced, or at least available for general purpose usage. Anyone familiar to swift internals here to say whether server-side swift is at least theorically feasible ?
pjmlp 12y ago
> C# and the .NET base class library, but AOT compiled to native code Mono -aot and .NET Native. Just not with RC, though. Or D, if you with to have both GC and RC.
samth 12y ago
I think the language you want is Ocaml.

steveklabnik 12y ago

That's true, you can't totally avoid knowing about these things. But if you don't want to think about them in your code, and are okay with the price, you can. It sounds like Swift may be close to what you want, yeah?

doublextremevil 12y ago
Unfortunately Swift is not open source or cross platform
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  Right, I meant solely on paradigm.
  - mseri 12y ago
    Ok, let's assume that they open it. First there will be need of a standard library. For the moment to do anything sensible you are importing Apple's Foundation Library (probably in one year time it will be better). Then I see no problem to have it server-side (both as a scripting or compiled language).
bsaul 12y ago
It looks to me that swift is the only language that can compete with rust if it were open sourced, or at least available for general purpose usage. Anyone familiar to swift internals here to say whether server-side swift is at least theorically feasible ?

pjmlp 12y ago

> C# and the .NET base class library, but AOT compiled to native code Mono -aot and .NET Native. Just not with RC, though. Or D, if you with to have both GC and RC.

samth 12y ago

I think the language you want is Ocaml.