> DLL’s add a level of complexity to writing and using software, and newer languages like Rust and Go have eschewed them,
Yeah, no. Every sane compiler developer would always prefer DLLs over static linking because of modularity. It makes the compiler much smaller if you can defer the combination of modules to a linker and thus have proper separate compilation.
Unfortunately, separate compilation with a C-like ABI only works well with a relatively limited monomorphic language. All other languages would have to leave quite a few optimizations on the table or make some suboptimal choices for uniform object representation (compare OCaml's ABI with Rust or Haskell).
Consequently, a modern language would face the tremendous (but I think interesting) task to extend the C-ABI in a way that allows these optimizations and separate compilation. Understandably, developers then play down the importance of separate compilation and choose a global approach.
Yeah, no. Every sane compiler developer would always prefer DLLs over static linking because of modularity. It makes the compiler much smaller if you can defer the combination of modules to a linker and thus have proper separate compilation.
Unfortunately, separate compilation with a C-like ABI only works well with a relatively limited monomorphic language. All other languages would have to leave quite a few optimizations on the table or make some suboptimal choices for uniform object representation (compare OCaml's ABI with Rust or Haskell).
Consequently, a modern language would face the tremendous (but I think interesting) task to extend the C-ABI in a way that allows these optimizations and separate compilation. Understandably, developers then play down the importance of separate compilation and choose a global approach.