[Info-vax] Rust as a HS language, was: Re: Quiet?

[Dan Cross]

In article <t2fc4n$fml$3 at dont-email.me>,
Simon Clubley  <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>On 2022-04-04, Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>> In article <t2eo9n$mj7$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Simon Clubley  <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>>1) The syntax. It's horrible and imposes a higher cognitive load than
>>>it needs to when you are looking at something new or revisiting old code.
>>>That means you are more likely to miss something or work a lot harder
>>>than you need to in order to understand the code.
>>>
>>>One of the official Ada RMs/Style Guides/etc had it right when it pointed
>>>out that you write the code once but read it many times. The Rust people
>>>have forgotten this.
>>
>> Surely this is subjective?
>
>All I can say is that I've learnt lots of languages over the years and
>the Rust syntax is easily the most ugly I have encountered.

Again, that's subjective.  I can think of half a dozen languages
that I personally feel are much uglier than Rust, Ada and COBOL
among them.  So what?  My personal aesthetics have little
bearing on the matter.

Though in fairness, when I first saw Rust I thought to myself,
"big ugly language, but super small runtime and works on bare
metal."  I have to admit, it's grown on me since then.

>>>2) No official ISO or similar language standard I can rely on 5/10/20 years
>>>from now when I need to work on my safety or general production critical
>>>code at that point.
>>
>> This is a valid point.
>>
>>>Even though many of the Rust people appear not to understand this, the
>>>lack of those guarantees is a _massive_ problem in the real world.
>>
>> But this is just insulting to the Rust people.  They aren't
>> fools.  They understand the value of standards, but they're
>> still evolving the language.  A standard will come in time.
>
>But other languages are also evolving over time, and they do it in
>a way that guarantees the next language variant is just another
>language mode in the existing compilers. That means I know I can still
>compile code written to that old language variant in the years to come.
>
>If the Rust language isn't going through a formal language standards
>process, how do I know that I can compile existing Rust code in
>5/10/20 years time ?

Again, they're not fools.  They understand the value of a robust
standard; when the time comes, I have every confidence that one
will be produced under the auspices of a relevant standards body
but, again, that time hasn't come yet.

Languages usually have a bit of history behind them before they
get standardized.

As for the, "how can I be sure my code will compile..." question
have a look at Rust "editions", that are per-crate attributes.
They provide exactly the sort of guarantees you are looking for.

	- Dan C.