archives

The evolution of Rust

Graydon Hoare is the original developer of Rust even before Mozilla adopted it. For the 1.0 release he prepared a lightning talk on how the language changed over 10 years.
He only published some bullet points, but the topic list is interesting as well.

  • Six ways Rust is fundamentally different from how it started
  • Six ways Rust is fundamentally the same as how it started
  • Six things we lost along the way
  • Six things we gained along the way
  • Six things I'm irrationally, disproportionately pleased by

Read the full blog post for the content of the five lists.

Second-order logic explained in plain English

John Corcoran, Second-order logic explained in plain English, in Logic, Meaning and Computation: Essays in Memory of Alonzo Church, ed. Anderson and Zelëny.

There is something a little bit Guy Steele-ish about trying to explain the fundamentals of second-order logic (SOL, the logic that Quine branded as set theory in sheep's clothing) and its model theory while avoiding any formalisation. This paper introduces the ideas of SOL via looking at logics with finite, countable and uncountable models, and then talks about FOL and SOL as being complementary approaches to axiomatisation that are each deficient by themself. He ends with a plea for SOL as being an essential tool at least as a heuristic.