A D vs. Rust example

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Friday, 21 October 2022 at 14:46:16 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> Swift added reference counting as GC (much because of 
> objective-C) and the result is that the language is quite 
> usable, much more easy to use than Rust. You will not end up 
> with senseless life time compiler error as in Rust.

Swift is probably the best option for writing applications for 
Apple products, but I don't feel that it will be accepted for 
portable system level programming, no matter how it changes in 
the future.

Even if it became a Rust/C++ replica it would still be perceived 
as being beholden to a singular entity. I can see why the Carbon 
docs put so much emphasis on no entity having more than 50% 
influence. "Backed by Google" is a selling point, but "Owned by 
Google" is a liability.

As more languages appear I think having a more cooperative 
collaborative approach to design will be something people look 
for.

Selecting a specific language is a big investment as languages 
get more complex (even TypeScript has grown to become rather 
complex). Developers don't want a single "political group" to 
block a design extension that matters to 20% of the users.

Since languages copy features from each other they are sometimes 
not all that different in ordinary programming, but cultures can 
be very different still. So that dimension will perhaps be more 
and more important in the next few decades.