alt Hacker News> I think this page describes "what" but not "why" of Carbon.
Maybe the page was updated recently, but there is a "why" link near the top:
https://docs.carbon-lang.dev/#why-build-carbon
What I would like to see is more documentation on the "why not" that summarizes why other languages and proposals are not sufficient. For example, Safe C++ proposal[1] appears to satisfy all requirements, but I can't find any reference to it.
Replies
justcuriousab • 08/01/2025
Did Safe C++ ever have a full, correct, fully compliant, reference implementation, or was there only (closed-source) Circle as some kind of reference implementation? Circle, as far as I know, is closed-source.
➕ show 2 replies
The reason the Safe C++ proposal wasn't mentioned is that it came years later. =] I'll see if it makes sense for us to update that section a bit, this probably isn't the only thing that we should refresh a bit to reflect the last few years of developments.
FWIW, the biggest challenge with Safe C++ is that WG21 rejected[1] that direction. And it was developed without building a governance model or way to evolve outside of WG21, and so doesn't seem to have a credible path forward.
[1]: FWIW, some members of WG21 don't agree with this characterizationp, but both the author's impression and the practical effect was to reject the direction.