the rust compiler is a fucking joke and nigh on impossible to bootstrap (because the idiots made it self-hosting instead of doing the responsible thing and writing it in C++), especially on non x86 systems.

like, look at this shit https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/bootstrapping-rust/
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@velartrill
They use C++ impl to bootstrap it: github.com/thepowersgang/mrust Rust needs more impls like other langs have. Writing "reference" impl in not itself would be hypocrisy 😃

@brombek > Writing "reference" impl in not itself would be hypocrisy

self-hosting a language has no upsides and many, many grave downsides. there is no good reason to do it, ever, period

@velartrill
Why are most languages self hosted then? C compilers are also self hosted. What are the downsides apart from secure bootstrapping needing another impl?

@velartrill
"Many programming languages have self-hosted implementations: compilers that are both in and for the same language. Such languages include Ada, BASIC, C, C++[5], C#[6], ClojureScript[7], CoffeeScript, Crystal, D, Dylan, F#, FASM, Forth, Gambas, Go, Haskell, HolyC, Java, Lisp, Modula-2, OCaml, Oberon, Pascal, Python, Rust, Scala, Smalltalk, TypeScript, Vala, and Visual Basic."

@velartrill
"In some of these cases, the initial implementation was not self-hosted, but rather, written in another language (or even in machine language); in other cases, the initial implementation was developed using bootstrapping."

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So Rust compiler was originally written in ML and later self-hosted. This is no different than many other mainstream languages. So why picking at Rust in particular?

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