Oddbean new post about | logout
 Anyone else getting tired of #Rust getting the credit for (G)ADTs? 

No? Just me?

#ocaml, #haskell, #StandardML, and #scala among others had this long before Rust and without the complexity of the borrow checker or lifetimes. Rust moves this concept of type system as bug prevention system forward for systems programming, but there is a long history of good compilers (targeting application development, not systems) that did this already (and in a few cases - better!). I am tiring of the narrative that Rust is the ”*only* memory safe  language"... 
 @4c9dfcc3 I would love to correct anyone in the Rust community who claims that Rust invented algebraic data types. I didn't see someone say that yet.

Of course, it is a feature. And people will say "Rust has X". They don't have to say "Rust has X where X was first invented by Y and implemented by Z1, Z2, …"

It is worth noting that Rust is not only targeted at systems programming. It is a general purpose language that you can get as low level with it as you want.