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0 pointscestith9mo ago0 comments

Do you know any other languages that tend to be safer than C and suitable for CLI tools but without the borrow checker? Over many years I’ve seen a lot in C++, Go, Perl, Python, Ruby, Pascal, various shells, assembly, Java, and some in Haxe, Ada, Lisp, Scheme, Julia, forms of Basic, and recently JavaScript or Typescript.

Most of those are more memory safe than C. None of them have the borrow checker. This leaves me wondering why - other than proselytizing Zig - this article would make such a direct and narrow comparison between only Zig and Rust.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

tayo429mo ago· 1 in thread

With how easily go creates statically compiled binaries and cross compiles I think that might be best language for cli tools. Unfortunate becasue it's annoyingly unexpressive.

reddit_clone9mo ago

Indeed, but it is considered a strength by Go enthusiasts. Not being able to build clever abstractions is a feature.

So is the error handling boilerplate.

pjmlp9mo ago· 1 in thread

OCaml for example,

Unix system programming in OCaml, from 1991

https://ocaml.github.io/ocamlunix/

cestithOP9mo ago

It’s such a nice language, too. It’s too bad it doesn’t get more attention. I know someone who regularly runs a couple of utilities written in Haskell, but they’re the only Haskell code in his entire organization. It’s a shop that has C, C++, Rust, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and Go in production, Java in legacy production, and has half a dozen other languages in production support situations. Haskell has not caught on there, though.

I’m aware a few companies use primarily OCaml just as a few use primarily some form of Lisp. It’s just that some of these really nice languages don’t see as much use as they could.

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