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by kryptiskt 4558 days ago
It's a bit timid of them to start from C#, I would have really liked if they had tried to build a system language starting from F#. Sure, an ML with no or optional garbage collection would be rather uncharted territory, but a man can dream.
2 comments
bjz_ 4558 days ago
> It's a bit timid of them to start from C#

Agreed.

> Sure, an ML with no or optional garbage collection would be rather uncharted territory

There is MLkit [1] (one of the inspirations for Rust), so it's definitely not uncharted. I don't think it broke free from GC, but it was a step in that direction.

[1] http://www.itu.dk/research/mlkit/index.php/Main_Page

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rbanffy 4558 days ago
> It's a bit timid of them to start from C#

Microsoft is a timid company. Any company in their dominant position (they own the corporate desktop) will avoid making anything very disruptive unless they feel they are playing a losing game.

Also, corporate-level C# developers are cheap and abundant. Much like Java was designed to be C++ developer friendly (and C# itself was designed to be Java developer friendly), it makes sense to design a new language to be more amenable to a large number of developers, even if it implies sacrificing some power.

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