Re:Rob Pike interview
by centimeter on Thursday April 30, 2020 @04:19PM
(#23035605)
> Go is one of the easiest languages to write with a simple text editor.
As long as you never refactor anything.
> Rust is among the hardest due to its complexity and demanding static analysis
I have never wanted or needed to offload Rust's "demanding static analysis" to my text editor. Rust's linearity/lifetime type system is really quite simple - it's not like you have to keep track of long-distance lifetime relationships in your head.
Even a reasonably powerful type system with e.g. HKTs, arithmetic, etc. like Haskell's rarely benefits from external tooling, and any interactivity can often be just as easily done via a polling build tool like ghcid rather than integrating it into a text editor.
The one place where it strikes me as sane to have a "smart" text editor is if you're using a proof assistant-style language like Coq/Idris/Isabelle/Liquid Haskell/etc. where there's actually a non-trivial amount of interactivity required while writing the code.
As long as you never refactor anything.
> Rust is among the hardest due to its complexity and demanding static analysis
I have never wanted or needed to offload Rust's "demanding static analysis" to my text editor. Rust's linearity/lifetime type system is really quite simple - it's not like you have to keep track of long-distance lifetime relationships in your head.
Even a reasonably powerful type system with e.g. HKTs, arithmetic, etc. like Haskell's rarely benefits from external tooling, and any interactivity can often be just as easily done via a polling build tool like ghcid rather than integrating it into a text editor.
The one place where it strikes me as sane to have a "smart" text editor is if you're using a proof assistant-style language like Coq/Idris/Isabelle/Liquid Haskell/etc. where there's actually a non-trivial amount of interactivity required while writing the code.