Rust

5974 readers

94 users here now

Welcome to the Rust community! This is a place to discuss about the Rust programming language.

Wormhole

!performance@programming.dev

Credits

The icon is a modified version of the official rust logo (changing the colors to a gradient and black background)

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

Ategon@programming.dev

EdTheLegendary@programming.dev

kahnclusions@programming.dev

torcherist@programming.dev

Who's working on a "smaller Rust"? (programming.dev)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by BatmanAoD@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev

63 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Almost five years ago, Saoirse "boats" wrote "Notes on a smaller Rust", and a year after that, revisited the idea.

The basic idea is a language that is highly inspired by Rust but doesn't have the strict constraint of being a "systems" language in the vein of C and C++; in particular, it can have a nontrivial (or "thick") runtime and doesn't need to limit itself to "zero-cost" abstractions.

What languages are being designed that fit this description? I've seen a few scripting languages written in Rust on GitHub, but none of them have been very active. I also recently learned about Hylo, which does have some ideas that I think are promising, but it seems too syntactically alien to really be a "smaller Rust."

Edit to add: I think Graydon Hoare's post about language design choices he would have preferred for Rust also sheds some light on the kind of things a hypothetical "Rust-like but not Rust" language could do differently: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] porgamrer@programming.dev 5 points 10 months ago

I appreciate your perspective, thanks for taking the time to share it!

I also agree with most of your points in favour of Rust. It is clearly the biggest programming language design breakthrough in decades.