An incomplete list of complaints about real code

rachelbythebay.com

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Haskell:

* Meaningful whitespace (Yes, you can use {;}, but no one does)

* Magic characters (Also optional, but yes everyone uses them)

* Dependencies - sort of? You can definitely write anything you want with base+containers+vector.

* Garbage Collection

* Exceptions - they do exist, even in pure code (although you can't catch them in pure code), but thankfully rare.

Rust:

* Magic characters

* dependency hell is possible here too

Is there any language that doesn't check one of these boxes? As far as I can tell, you either have a Garbage Collector, unsafe pointers, or Rust. Is there another language that falls into the Rust category that's not early in development?

I was thinking "modern C++" is potentially a good fit for avoiding most of these complaints (i.e. if you solely use smart pointers). Given their other post about technology choices[0] I'd guess it's a safe assumption.

That said, I don't think any language is without trade-offs. As the author says:

> Hint: if you can't find something stunningly wrong with your "chosen one" language, you probably haven't been using it long enough...

[0]: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/09/24/feedback/

I mean, if you're going to allow "use a subset of the language that doesn't avoid these complaints", then Rust also fits the bill. You can easily avoid using the magic characters, and not use any dependencies.

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