[nickpsecurity]

Most of those languages had no clear, formal spec early on. Especially C and C++: one getting started with UNIX and ad hoc code with the other starting as C w/ Classes plus some extra features from other languages. IIRC, Java's initial mandates hurt it because they were terrible quality in a number of areas and took up to a 15x (yes, times) performance hit in some measurements I saw. JavaScript were two, competing implementations with a ship-first mentality with a bit of it standardized later with vendor-specific stuff left in. C# did have a language specification on v1.0 whose quality I have no knowledge of. I do know they internally beta'd it starting in the late 90's. So, it was done similar to Rust but privately for years before that spec.

So, I'm not seeing your examples as relevant or a critique. Most were in use and changing [to their benefit] before any spec was created. Three of those very publicly, one privately. Another sucked partly thanks to formalizations with lots of money driving adoption. I think you should read Gabriel's Worse is Better essays... several rather than just the first... to see why pushing a partly done or evolving system is right approach for growth & accelerated improvements. Lipner at Microsoft, inventor of successful Security Development Lifecycle, incidentally thought the same thing.

Least Rust team is trying to fix problems and evolve in a robust way. That's quite rare for mainstream stuff that I've seen.

[dasfasf]

To be honest, I'm not seeing your pointing this out as relevant. I never claimed Rust should have a spec at this point in its life, or claimed any other language had a spec at an equivalent point in its life, and I explicitly disclaimed any criticism. I objected only to the statement that Rust is "just as finalized as any other language". Talking about other languages' youth and whether being specified early is a good thing is especially disingenuous, since the topic of the thread was whether Rust was a good candidate to use now, compared against other languages as they exist now, not making some kind of "fair" comparison against their early versions.

[nickpsecurity]

"I objected only to the statement that Rust is "just as finalized as any other language"."

I might have been too hasty there. Your context and this quote makes much more sense. I say something similar to them myself. Yet, they've already entered a 1.0 mode where they're not breaking stuff with much of it documented in guides. That's not formal but pretty final on language itself. Standard libraries and other tooling are where most of their work is right now.

So, I don't feel it's an accurate statement but it's close if we're talking the language. I prefer to say the core language is pretty stable or something like that.