A look at modern programming languages: Rust, Nim, Vale [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMpqj_nMsg0

by hazelnut-tree • 4 years ago

3 1 4 years ago

youtube.com

hazelnut-tree• 4 years ago

Some extracts from the video (the full video has much more detail):

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Rust

"It borrows great proven concepts from other languages like, for example, algebraic data types. It makes sure that the language constructs don't lead to slow or inefficient code. Rust calls it zero cost abstractions."

"There's also no compromise regarding memory safety. This must not be delegated to the programmer - it must be inherent in the language. Rust tries to tackle the problem of mutable state with heavy restrictions where the state can be modified through the borrow checker. The resulting programs are easier to reason about, albeit harder to write. Architecture must not be an afterthought. However, there are also some downsides in Rust: some functionality which is easy to achieve in other languages might be rather hard."

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Nim

"One can write highly efficient code in such a simple way. The code is easy to read and really a pleasure to look at. It's compiled to C but can also be compiled to JavaScript."

"Nim's memory management is deterministic and customizable and it even follows some move semantics which are inspired by C++ and Rust and it's therefore also suited for embedded and hard real-time systems you can even choose which garbage collector runs."

"Nim also has a powerful macro system and you can actually directly manipulate the abstract syntax tree and therefore you can create your own domain specific languages."

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Vale

"It's a brand new language currently still in its alpha version."

"Vale is fast. It uses LLVM as a compiler back-end, it's statically typed and it uses so-called 'generational references'. It's a technique for memory safety. Soon it will have a region borrow checker to make it even faster (and because it uses generational references). It's also safe and it also has fearless foreign function interface, and of course Vale strives to be easy and memory safe."

"Generational references: they are a memory management technique which allows for easy deterministic and very fast memory access so generational references are built on the concept of single ownership (that you might already know from Rust)."

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The future

"We're kind-of stuck with the mainstream languages. The future looks bright - so many interesting concepts, so many new and better ways of doing things. Makes me curious and I can't wait to see the future impact of such languages."

A look at modern programming languages: Rust, Nim, Vale [video]

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