[PommeDeTerre]

I'm not sure that you're interpreting such a stance correctly.

Any further 1.x releases should clearly try to avoid incompatibility as much as possible. Anyone seriously using a programming language does require a relatively high degree of stability with respect to language changes, library changes, and so forth.

But that in no way means that there can't be work done on a 2.x release that does introduce incompatibilities in an effort to improve the language and any standard libraries it may offer.

This situation is much more about controlling change, rather than preventing it outright.

[pcwalton]

We have no interest in stabilizing Rust 0.5, 0.6, or any earlier version. They are versions of the language that are useless for our needs—they weren't even memory safe (and fixing that required breaking some code).

The most realistic way to address your criticism would just to have been to keep the language a secret until it's mostly stable. This is what most other companies do (for example, this is what Google did with Go). But then you couldn't use it at all.