@Centril Thanks for point me to that reddit thread.
I would say that I also don’t fully agree with the everything Graydon says about negative space. I think we should make sure that Rust is relevant to whatever the current state/needs of technology are, especially in such a fast-moving field as computer science
However, I do see a need for temporary negative space: ruling out an area of exploration for a time (e.g. an edition) to be reevaluated later. In particular, I think that would allow us to focus community efforts and improve scalability.
We have tons of work in progress and not nearly enough bandwidth to keep up; tons of stuff is semi-perma-unstable because it’s just not getting worked on. We have 344 open tracking issues (https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AC-tracking-issue), and as of now, all but about 30 haven’t been touched since October 2018. Half haven’t even been touched since 2017.
I don’t think temporary negative space will hamper Rust’s growth in the future, but I do think we need to make some hard choices about where to focus efforts. I think that necessarily means we will need to make some sacrifices and some will be disappointed (I’ve been on the receiving end of that too sometimes).