it feels like there’s a smaller language hiding in Rust that’s half as powerful at the edges but 10-50x easier to read, write, and maintain
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it would be a smaller language but a bigger runtime. the missing thing is preemptive gc
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It wouldn't be at all the same thing anymore. The real purpose and challenge behind designing it was providing memory safety without a garbage collection scheme. If someone wants a high level language, Rust isn't a good fit. It's not ML with type classes. It's a C replacement.
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that's a valid perspective, but there are plenty of rust programmers who view it as a ML with type classes, and both are correct, and more besides
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Garbage collection is an extremely core part of ML. If you look at Rust as ML with type classes, you're going to be very disappointed, because you're missing that the language is entirely designed around being low level with low-level control, no GC and zero cost abstractions.
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It doesn't have currying or other distinctive features of ML beyond sum types and pattern matching. It shares a lot more with C++ than it does with ML, beyond just syntax. It has a bit of ML heritage, but that's it. Extending ML with type classes wouldn't fundamentally change it.
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The core of Rust and what makes it unique is the ownership system, move semantics, borrowing / lifetimes, etc. It has sum types and pattern matching because they're standard features in any modern programming language with a decent type system. It wasn't designed around those.