We make a pilgrim's (if not a whig's) progress over time, good point.
The next generation of programming languages should address safety and ||ism. Rust takes these on based on prior work (e.g. Cyclone) but with influence from C++ best practices, which I think is winning.
We'll see how Rust fare, especially with the recent stable release. Personally I'd like to see programming to aim at Haskell, even Idris. But let's not fantasize too much (especially in a thread about WebAssembl*).
I am referring to those things, in general terms (I'm not a protestant or a whig!).
Haskell, Idris, and I must add PureScript are great, but will not sweep all before. Especially when "systems programing".
Cyclone was (a) a research project and language; (b) too heavy on sigils. Rust started with sigils but ended in a great spot, with only & and region (lifetime) ` annotations. Usability, developer ergonomics, matter.
The next generation of programming languages should address safety and ||ism. Rust takes these on based on prior work (e.g. Cyclone) but with influence from C++ best practices, which I think is winning.