> any safety checks put into the competing language will have a runtime cost, which often is unacceptable
This is completely wrong. The best counterexample is probably ATS http://www.ats-lang.org which is compatible with C, yet also features dependent types (allowing us to prove arbitrary statements about our programs, and check them at compile time) and linear type (allowing us to precisely track resource usage; similar to Rust)
> It may seem that using cairo functions in ATS is nearly identical to using them in C (modulo syntatical difference). However, what happens at the level of typechecking in ATS is far more sophisticated than in C. In particular, linear types are assigned to cairo objects (such as contexts, surfaces, patterns, font faces, etc.) in ATS to allow them to be tracked statically, that is, at compile-time, preventing potential mismanagement of such objects. For instance, if the following line:
val () = cairo_surface_destroy (sf) // a type error if omitted
> is removed from the program in tutprog_hello.dats, then a type-error message is issued at compile-time to indicate that the resource sf is not properly freed. A message as such can be of great value in practice for correcting potential memory leaks that may otherwise readily go unnoticed. ATS is a programming language that distinguishes itself in its practical and effective support for precise resource management.
This is completely wrong. The best counterexample is probably ATS http://www.ats-lang.org which is compatible with C, yet also features dependent types (allowing us to prove arbitrary statements about our programs, and check them at compile time) and linear type (allowing us to precisely track resource usage; similar to Rust)
A good example is http://ats-lang.sourceforge.net/DOCUMENT/ATS2CAIRO/HTML/c36.... which uses the Cairo graphics library, and ends with the following:
> It may seem that using cairo functions in ATS is nearly identical to using them in C (modulo syntatical difference). However, what happens at the level of typechecking in ATS is far more sophisticated than in C. In particular, linear types are assigned to cairo objects (such as contexts, surfaces, patterns, font faces, etc.) in ATS to allow them to be tracked statically, that is, at compile-time, preventing potential mismanagement of such objects. For instance, if the following line:
> is removed from the program in tutprog_hello.dats, then a type-error message is issued at compile-time to indicate that the resource sf is not properly freed. A message as such can be of great value in practice for correcting potential memory leaks that may otherwise readily go unnoticed. ATS is a programming language that distinguishes itself in its practical and effective support for precise resource management.