this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
34 points (87.0% liked)

Rust

6130 readers
60 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
snowe@programming.dev
Ategon@programming.dev
EdTheLegendary@programming.dev
kahnclusions@programming.dev
torcherist@programming.dev
34
Who's working on a "smaller Rust"? (programming.dev)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 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
[โ€“] Reptorian@programming.dev 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Coming from some one who used 4 different languages (C#, C++, Python, and G'MIC), I just feel more comfortable when there's a explicit end blocks, which is why I don't like Python. Of all of those languages, only Python does not make that explicit end block which is off-putting in my opinion, and there isn't any other options with the similar role to Python.

[โ€“] bluGill@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

Ruby often comes up as a python alternative. There are a lot of other lesser known choices - but any of them will still be more popular (at least at first) than something you come up with and thus any of the will give more community support.