Native Reflection in Rust

Yes, that's true but that is an implementation detail that only comes into play when dealing with ABI, and then you should be using #[repr(transparent)] to ensure that the compiler won't do something else :)

ABI wise that is not true though. structs have struct ABI, even just a newtype struct around an integer will not use integer ABI unless annotated with #[repr(transparent)].

Rust will complain about a recursion limit being reached during instantiation[1]. The solution in Rust is to use &dyn Trait or Box<dyn Trait> instead.[2]

[1]: https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio...

[2]: https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio...

^ This blows the stack because it keeps calling itself with no break condition, but shows how the type system accepted the code.

I think this is called polymorphic recursion in Haskell circles.

In C++ you can monomorphize as long as you can somehow prove the recursion terminates at compile time (for example by threading a static recursion counter).

I only recently realized that certain type system features, like polymorphic recursion, make monomorphization impossible in the general case. In Haskell for example, it’s by necessity only an optimization that’s used where applicable, and not the general strategy.

That depends on what you mean. SML has "polymorphism" boiling down to being able to plug an arbitrary type in some places, which is denoted like 'a. But when people talk about generics, they more often talk about C++ templates, Java generics, Rust traits, etc. whose SML equivalent are signatures, structs and functors. Signatures are a bit like Rust traits, structs are a bit like Rust implementations of traits, whereas functors are like Rust's "templates", i.e. wherever you swap angle brackets to parametrise something with types constrained by traits, or values constrained by types. Except in Rust this parametrisation can be slapped on a bunch of things. It can be on structs, on functions, on traits, on implementations of traits etc. In SML you need to group all the "parametrised" things into a struct (and a corresponding signature), which is going to be returned by a functor.

And now the thing is: with transparent signature ascriptions, functors are monomorphised in SML, instead of everything being hidden behind signatures (as is in the case of Rust with traits when you use dyn), which has semantic consequences. E.g. a struct returned by a functor may contain a type. You can't perform proper type-checking without monomorphising, because you don't know what the exact type is. E.g. in the following program, the final line couldn't be type-checked without monomorphisation:

   signature ITERABLE = sig
       type ElemT
       type SrcT
   
       val new_iter: SrcT -> unit -> ElemT option
   end
   
   signature LIST_ELEM_TYPE = sig
       type T
   end
   
   functor ListIterFun (ListElemType: LIST_ELEM_TYPE): ITERABLE = struct
       type ElemT = ListElemType.T
       type SrcT = ElemT list
   
       fun new_iter l = let val lr = ref l
                        in
                          fn () => case !lr of
                                     nil => NONE
                                   | (x::xs) => (lr := xs; SOME x)
                        end
   
   end
   
   structure IntElemType: LIST_ELEM_TYPE = struct
       type T = int
   end
   
   structure IntListIter = ListIterFun(IntElemType)
   
   val next = IntListIter.new_iter [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

There was a lot of discussion of this issue when Go was settling on a design for its generics, under the phrase "reified generics".

Firefox's js runtime also do tricks like generate multi copy of optimized function when the function has multi call site instead make one with lots of if else. So it no longer suffer from the problem that function that frequently get multi different type of parameters from different call site has poor performance.

It's probably exactly how templates work, except the details are invisible to users.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/11/warp-improved-js-performan...

Yes! Java as well. And this is how those languages can show impressive benchmarks for consistent workloads. In theory they can even surpass AoT languages. In practice it depends on the specifics.

Julia doesn't do this. It just has structs in the first place.

It indeed does. The only difference is that Rust has traits (similar to C++'s concepts) which require explicit mention of what interface the type parameters have inside the function, whereas C++'s templates will have a compile error after instantiation if you passed something that didn't meet the expected contract. This is closer to Rust's macros in operation.

Given

    fn foo<T>(a: T, b: T) -> T { a + b }

    error[E0369]: cannot add `T` to `T`
     --> src/lib.rs:1:32
      |
    1 | fn foo<T>(a: T, b: T) -> T { a + b }
      |                              - ^ - T
      |                              |
      |                              T
      |
    help: consider restricting type parameter `T`
      |
    1 | fn foo<T: Add<Output = T>>(a: T, b: T) -> T { a + b }
      |         +++++++++++++++++

[1]: https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=nightly&mode=debug&editi...