This is a reconstruction – extracted and very lightly edited – of the “prehistory” of Rust development, when it was a personal project between 2006-2009 and, after late 2009, a Mozilla project conducted in private.
The purposes of publishing this now are:
It might encourage someone with a hobby project to persevere
It might be of interest to language or CS researchers someday
It might settle some arguments / disputed historical claims
The pdf in the first post is definitely worth looking at
I’m not sure why, but the history of a language, and perhaps more importantly, the people behind it matter to me. I think I am just too principled for my own good (I’d prefer not to support/use anything created by anyone who is bigoted or who I have felt has been damaging to society).
I get the sentiment but technology doesn’t get influenced by human morals. If a library / language / tool works flawlessly then I’d leave it to courts to resolve any moral (or even criminal) problems with the author of the piece of tech.
…And now I am even less inclined to read any Rust history since you implied that the creators have some sort of a dark past.
Not at all (at least not to my knowledge) in fact I was pleased to learn its creator isn’t the same person who created JS although I don’t think I’ve ever seen any pictures or videos/talks by Graydon Hoare… I’m beginning to wonder whether the person actually exists