[jynelson]

I think we are using different meanings of the term "cohere" and I am not sure how to reconcile them. I agree that Rust with async is a more useful language. I don't think being useful implies anything about how coherent a language is (I would point to bash and perl as examples of useful languages with very little coherence). "Coherence" to me means that all the features fit together tightly and are designed with each other in mind, and I don't think that's the case for async and const in Rust—simply because they aren't finished being designed.

[hitekker]

Your point on coherence is similar to the perspective of an ex-C++ maintainer. This video came out a decade ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAWA1DuvCnQ&t=2530s and I feel his lesson went unheeded. It's relevant to the bigger and more dangerous concept of Conceptual Integrity by Fred Brooks.

[ameliaquining]

Is it ever possible for removing a feature from a language to make it less coherent?

[jynelson]

I think so, yes. If you remove any of the things in the “core” I mention in the post, the language hangs together much worse even though it’s smaller; enums without pattern matching is a simple example.

I’m not just saying that I want to go back to the “good old days”, I really do think that those parts of Rust were designed as a coherent whole, in the same way that Uiua is designed as a coherent whole.