

D, Go, Vala, and Rust: A new generation of native languages - CowboyRobot
http://www.drdobbs.com/slideshows/232901643

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pcwalton
There are several inaccuracies here regarding Rust, unfortunately:

"Boxes, which can be owned by only one owner, contain the data."

We usually use "box" to mean "task-local data", which can't move. (Some of us
are trying to drift away from the "box" terminology altogether, since it's
potentially confusing -- "GC data" or "task-local data" is easier.) Generally
we use the term "uniquely-owned data" for data that's intended to move from
task to task.

"This is conceptually similar to mutexes, but with an orderly transfer of
control and no option for waiting for a box."

The comparison to mutexes is puzzling; mutexes are for protecting access to
shared data, while unique pointers are for transfer of ownership of data with
a single owner. In any case, you _can_ wait for uniquely-owned data to arrive
on a channel; just use the blocking receive function.

"Right now, it appears to be the product of a single individual."

This is simply untrue. We have about a half-dozen core Rust developers in
Research and several community contributors. Most of us have other
responsibilities, but Rust is one of the top priorities of the research team
as a group. The commit logs [1] reflect this.

[1]: <https://github.com/mozilla/rust/commits/master>

~~~
kibwen
Re: Rust contributors, Github's new graphs make the case quite well:

<https://github.com/mozilla/rust/graphs/contributors>

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Kliment
Single page version at
<http://www.drdobbs.com/article/print?articleId=232901643>

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javert
Go has 3x the speed of C/C++??? What??? How is that even possible? This is a
mistake in the article, right?

~~~
DanWaterworth
Clearly it meant a third of the speed, 3x the time taken

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heretohelp
This is a pretty terrible article.

To recap:

1/2 (2 out of 4) of the namedrops are of dead languages/communities.

The other 1/2 are about languages that don't have much in common in terms of
specialization and purpose (Rust and Go).

Focusing on "native" languages is a pretty meaningless delineation anyway.

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DavidAbrams
But I don't see anyone using D or development tools that support it.

Vala sounds like Objective-C (although I'm sure its syntax is less retarded).
If people are going to spend time learning some enhanced flavor of C, they
might as well learn the more-marketable Objective-C.

