Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

That would be pretty cool! I'm not sure Rust can support these features, though.

* Generational References involve some pretty deep compiler support. One can implement something like it in Rust with a thread-local side table, but with >3x overhead compared to language-supported generational references.

* Higher RAII requires that a language not treat destructors and panic handlers as the same thing. Unfortunately, Rust uses one function (drop) for both. Additionally, it would be a backwards-incompatible change; Rust generic parameters already assume a zero-arg drop() is available for all parameters, even though there's no trait bound declared for them.

* Regions get most of the borrow checker's optimizing power with a fraction of the user complexity. Having both borrow checking and regions would just be adding complexity though, which defeats the purpose a bit.

Still, there are a few other features of Vale that we're thinking of proposing to Rust, especially around concurrency, determinism, and better memory safety guarantees.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: