Rust and D

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:05:19 +0200
"Peter Alexander" <peter.alexander.au at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Interestingly, Rob Pike comments on this world view:
> 
> http://commandcenter.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html
> ----
> "Early in the rollout of Go I was told by someone that he could 
> not imagine working in a language without generic types. As I 
> have reported elsewhere, I found that an odd remark.
> 
> To be fair he was probably saying in his own way that he really 
> liked what the STL does for him in C++. For the purpose of 
> argument, though, let's take his claim at face value.
> 
> What it says is that he finds writing containers like lists of 
> ints and maps of strings an unbearable burden. I find that an odd 
> claim. I spend very little of my programming time struggling with 
> those issues, even in languages without generic types.
> 
> But more important, what it says is that types are the way to 
> lift that burden. Types. Not polymorphic functions or language 
> primitives or helpers of other kinds, but types.
> 
> That's the detail that sticks with me."
> ----


Sounds like Pike is either implying that all approaches are created
equal, or that "types" are inferior. On the contrary, I think there's
good reason to prefer the type-based solution.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't understand the other approaches well
enough. Maybe Pike would actually convince more people if he
spent more time explaining *how* Go sufficiently addresses the issue
and less time using meta-arguments to rehash "Why can't people just
start liking Go?"

It's unfortunate, because the more I read these quotes of his, the more
I have to wonder whether his emperor even has any clothes at all.