![]() This is one way to enable dynamic typing.īut Rust does not include type information overhead with every value. It’s like a hidden field implicitly present in every object. In some languages, the type of every (non-primitive) value is embedded in machine code. I then took it to extreme levels of dynamic typing that I didn’t expect to be possible.Īlong the way, I had to reconsider once again what a type actually is.Īnd since I found the results quite interesting and surprising, I wanted to share it in this article. I’ve come across some practical programming problems that I wasn’t able to solve without some (safe) downcasts here and there. The distinction between &mut and & types defines if aliasing is allowed.Īnd in a way, types implementing the Future trait describe an entire finite state machine.īut today I want to talk about runtime type evaluation in Rust. Lifetimes incorporate the memory management aspect inside the type. Rust showed me several completely new concepts that can be achieved with its clever type system. I loved how strongly typed everything felt with Rust.Ĭomparing to C and C++, Rust removed the most frustrating parts from them.įorgetting to initialize variabels was no longer possible, null pointers ceased to exist, and memory management became a blast.įast-forward to today. It seemed like entire programs could be written in the type system itself. Types became a completely different concept. On the other hand, I hated it when errors only appeared at runtime that I knew a compiler could tell me before. In that case, they must be right to make the runtime happy, which seemed to be more forgiving than the compiler. They were just a necessity to make the compiler happy.Įxpanding to JavaScript, I realized that types can also be hidden in the background. When I wrote my very first lines of program code, in C++, a type was for me just the thing to define a variable.Īs I got more practice, with C++ and Java, types in my mind became essentially equivalent to classes or primitives.īut I didn’t think much about types anyway. What even are they?įor me, the answer depends quite a bit on the programming language and the general context of the discussion. Section 2: Type-Oriented Message Passing.Section 1: A Heterogenous Collection of Singletons.In that aspect, they build on top of each other. What connects is the way runtime type evaluation is applied. The three sections in the middle each cover their own idea with a separate motivation. The article is divided into introduction, background, three sections containing the main content, and a conclusion. There are some wild ideas in it, so fasten your seatbelt and get ready for a ride! It will involve a good chunk of dynamic typing, and yes it's in Rust. Today, I'm writing about what types can be used for other than checking code properties.
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