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by jakewins 3122 days ago
I'm curious - in both of those articles Joel uses the expression "software doesn't rust", to make fun of Netscape.. is that where the name for the Rust language came from?
3 comments

The name has multiple origins, Graydon notoriously gave a different story each time he was asked.

One of the origins mentioned is that Graydon thought that rusts (a kind of mushroom) were pretty cool (they are! they have a super complex lifecycle and it's pretty interesting).

Another is that Rust is actually not something with new concepts in it, everything in Rust is a very well established concept from earlier PL research, Rust just packages them nicely.

I'm not really sure if calling rust a kind of mushroom is being that fair on it.
It’s not. There’s no canonical reasons, and there’s multiple non-canonical ones.
I noticed that too and was curious. A quick search doesn't say that's where it came from, but I agree it would be ironic. Maybe that planted a seed in someone's mind.