Re: Consideration for Rust contributions in Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org>
> Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:51:32 -0500
> Cc: Troy Hinckley <comms@dabrev.com>, Sean Allred <allred.sean@gmail.com>,
>  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 9:26 AM Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide
> <arne_bab@web.de> wrote:
> >
> > There was a point about complexity: adding another language besides C
> > and elisp increases complexity for contributors and maintainers a lot.
> 
> Once upon a time, functions deemed performance critical were
> implemented within the C core.  Over time that impetus has
> diminished greatly.  I have observed large amounts of functionality
> migrate from C to lisp.  Native compilation can only have reinforced
> that evolution.
> 
> The net effect has been to reduce the need for most emacs developers
> ever to need to work in any language other than lisp.

Quite a few new features are still being implemented in C.  Consider
just the recent innovations: native-compilation, tree-sitter, support
for XInput2 and touch devices, to name just a few.

Moreover, familiarity with the internals implemented in C is IME quite
necessary even for Emacs developers who almost never touch that layer.

So the above is true only up to a point.