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Who's working on a "smaller Rust"? (programming.dev)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by BatmanAoD@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev

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Almost five years ago, Saoirse "boats" wrote "Notes on a smaller Rust", and a year after that, revisited the idea.

The basic idea is a language that is highly inspired by Rust but doesn't have the strict constraint of being a "systems" language in the vein of C and C++; in particular, it can have a nontrivial (or "thick") runtime and doesn't need to limit itself to "zero-cost" abstractions.

What languages are being designed that fit this description? I've seen a few scripting languages written in Rust on GitHub, but none of them have been very active. I also recently learned about Hylo, which does have some ideas that I think are promising, but it seems too syntactically alien to really be a "smaller Rust."

Edit to add: I think Graydon Hoare's post about language design choices he would have preferred for Rust also sheds some light on the kind of things a hypothetical "Rust-like but not Rust" language could do differently: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html

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[–] 80avin@programming.dev 2 points 10 months ago

Yes, and that's what the post is about.

Saying that Rust is not the right tool for this job, what other tools exist which are similar to Rust but also do the job.

I don't have the answer though. Just came to add my thoughts.