1. Release fast and iterate
2. Release fast and be stuck with mistakes
3. Release slow
Swift appears to be taking option #2 (Apple doesn't commonly break APIs, do they?), but we can't even really be sure because it hasn't been developed in the open the way that Rust has. It's possible that it's been in development as long as Rust, and we simply haven't heard about it yet. Either way, option #2 is a perfectly reasonable one to go with; it has served Java quite well (for a loose definition of fast), though it has required some creative approaches to language improvements.
Rust is taking option #3. C has been around for over 40 years now. If Rust hopes to supplant it, it seems reasonable to take a few extra months (or even an extra year) to put out a solid version 1 that won't hamstring the language or force a breaking change down the line.
This is actually nice, because knowing about languages years before they are production ready probably just slows developer adoption because nobody is quite sure when they should trust there development process to a new language.
You also didn't realize that you just built the biggest strawman ever in the above sentence.
Enough with the "I want a stable Rust now". Rust, like any other language, takes years to stabilize. You just happen to see it happen in the open, whereas most other languages you get them at their 1.0 release.
>This may sound harsh, but it really doesn't matter what features and benefits Rust could potentially bring to the table if the lack of stability makes it unusable in practice today. A programming language that can't be seriously used might as well not even exist.
They could not give a flying duck about it being "seriously used today".
They'll start to care AFTER they release it as 1.0. They only released this 0.x versions to solicit ideas and improvements, not to get programmer's to adopt it.
Assuming this stabilization actually does happen, whether it happens in public or private is irrelevant.
What matters is that we've seen C++ stabilize. We've seen Go stabilize. We've seen Scala stabilize. And now we'll likely see Swift stabilize, well before Rust does. They are all serious competitors to Rust.
As these other languages continue to evolve, but at the same time remaining usable, the relevance of Rust will continually decrease. It may still have drawing power today. A few years from now, it will have less appeal.
It's hard to make a comparison against Swift, which is a proprietary language developed for years behind closed doors. Presumably they're at 1.0 from the first day by design. You can't do that with open source languages.
It's pretty absurd to expect Rust to be stable right from the get go. The difference in all this is that most of those languages were closed before being released. Rust was open at a pretty early state.
Personally, I consider the 0.1 release in January 2012 to mark Rust's "birthday". Everything prior to that was just gestation. :)
If you like it, perhaps you should be a little patient and give the creators the benefit of the doubt. No one wants a Rust 3.0 fiasco.
It's hard to encounter language issues without implementing a large project in the language. I am happy that they're taking the time to let the implementation of Servo help inform the design of Rust.
Perhaps this is news to you, but those of us who work on and are responsible for large-scale software systems tend to take such factors very seriously.
This may sound harsh, but it really doesn't matter what features and benefits Rust could potentially bring to the table if the lack of stability makes it unusable in practice today. A programming language that can't be seriously used might as well not even exist.
I don't doubt that Apple will have Swift available in a seriously usable form by this fall, and it's very likely that it will see rapid adoption soon after. I'm afraid I can't say the same about Rust and its supposed by-the-end-of-2014 1.0 release, given its current lack of stability and the rapidly-approaching end of the year.