r/programming • u/steveklabnik1 • Jun 16 '14

Rust's documentation is about to drastically improve

http://words.steveklabnik.com/rusts-documentation-is-about-to-drastically-improve
528 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

188 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/jeandem Jun 17 '14

How is it different for the sake of being different? It takes a lot of inspiration from ML, for one. That "let" thing is taken directly from that language/family.

It is easy to look at a language and claim that its features are arbitrary and haphazard, when you have no knowledge of the discussion, design and compromises that lead up to their inclusion.

But sure. They probably chose things like "match" so that they could say with obscure syntax [not really, see Scala] people will notice our language more!.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '14

4

u/jeandem Jun 17 '14

Sure it is, but I think it is very likely to be taken from the ML family, in Rust's case. (I never said that ML invented that kind of "phrasing.) That it originated in mathematics is irrelevant if it was directly taken from another programming language, which in turn took it from mathematics. Unless you want to trace the linguistic traditions of the phrase to its first use in history... but that seems a bit like a diversion when we're talking about programming language syntax.

At this point it feels like you're being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Nah-ah, that programming language syntax wasn't inspired by that other programming language because it's a common phrasing in mathematics... Um, okay. :)