From: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2019 12:39:29 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: wip
X-Git-Url: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~ijackson/git?a=commitdiff_plain;h=c727b166a3a81388398fd4e56dc828723db3d958;p=talk-2019-ghm-rust.git

wip
---

diff --git a/talk.txt b/talk.txt
index 5eb0dc1..43fc994 100644
--- a/talk.txt
+++ b/talk.txt
@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ impossible.  You have to work at it to make a memory leak.  Rust
 programs are safe (by default): you can write bugs, but you cannot
 randomly corrupt memory (or otherwise trigger what in C/C++ is called
 "undefined behaviour").  The ownership rules even give you safe
-multithreading!
+multithreading.
 
 And, the ownership system means that the compiler can often optimise
 very aggressively, because it has really good visibility of all the
@@ -84,7 +84,50 @@ to garbage collected languages, the ownership system eliminates a lot
 of runtime memory management.  I have found Rust programs to generally
 be very fast.
 
+C======================================================================C
 
+Apart from the ownership system, there is little new in Rust.
+Nevertheless, it is an advanced language with a lot of expressive
+power - power which is generally available without sacrificing
+performance.
+
+Sometimes advanced languages from academia can be rather inaccessible:
+they can feel like incomprehensible alien technology, with a steep
+learning curve and an unfamiliar or even obscure syntax.
+
+Not Rust.  Rust has managed to take the best - and most proven -
+features of earlier research languages and package them up into a
+whole which feels fairly familiar and is easy to use.
+
+Rust's syntax is built from the familiar structure of curly braces,
+keywords, parentheses, and infix expressions.  It looks a lot like C
+or JavaScript or something.
+
+Rust is statically typed.  The compiler will typecheck it.  This is
+great.  You may have heard Haskell and Ocaml programmers say "once you
+can get the program to typecheck, it will probably work".  Rust has
+the same experience.  When in the throes of writing a complex
+algorithm you can type some drivelous pseudocode into your text
+editor.  Then keep fixing errors until it builds and lo! it will often
+work.
+
+For polymorphism, Rust has generics.  These will be known to
+Haskell programmers as typeclasses.
+
+They're a bit like C++
+templates, but not mad.
+
+For when you want runtime polymorphism, Rust has a dynamic dispatch
+system.
+
+[ Example from bottom of xenstored/history.ml ]
+
+
+
+
+, but Rust has 
+
+Those other can  (which can sometimes be