[catnaroek]

In general, Haskell does not do parametric polymorphism through monomorphization. In particular, higher-rank polymorphism becomes unusable if polymorphism is implemented through monomorphization. On the other hand, if I recall correctly, Rust only supports higher-rank polymorphism for lifetimes, which neither have nor need a runtime representation. This is why monomorphization is a viable implementation strategy for Rust generics.

(Aside: Type checkers essentially see recursive function definitions as applications of a fixed point operator to non-recursive functions. If your function has a rank-1 type but uses polymorphic recursion, the type checker sees it as the application of a rank-2 fixed point operator to a non-recursive function. This is why I see polymorphic recursion as “morally higher-rank polymorphism”, even when the type signatures in your code are ostensibly rank-1 ones. Polymorphic recursion is widely used in Haskell.)

However, IMO, you only need rank-1 polymorphism 95% of the time anyway, so optimizing for the common use case is a good strategy. By far, the main use case for generics is implementing efficient and reasonably reusable data structures and algorithms in a reasonably type-safe way. For this use case, monomorphization and aggressive inlining of small functions are evidently the right things to do. Other uses of generics (say, streaming I/O frameworks) strike me as a lot more questionable.