Most of those languages had no clear, formal spec early on. Especially C and C++: one getting started with UNIX and ad hoc code with the other starting as C w&#x2F; Classes plus some extra features from other languages. IIRC, Java&#x27;s initial mandates hurt it because they were terrible quality in a number of areas and took up to a 15x (yes, times) performance hit in some measurements I saw. JavaScript were two, competing implementations with a ship-first mentality with a bit of it standardized later with vendor-specific stuff left in. C# did have a language specification on v1.0 whose quality I have no knowledge of. I do know they internally beta&#x27;d it starting in the late 90&#x27;s. So, it was done similar to Rust but privately for years before that spec.<p>So, I&#x27;m not seeing your examples as relevant or a critique. Most were in use and changing [to their benefit] before any spec was created. Three of those very publicly, one privately. Another sucked partly thanks to formalizations with lots of money driving adoption. I think you should read Gabriel&#x27;s Worse is Better essays... several rather than just the first... to see why pushing a partly done or evolving system is right approach for growth &amp; accelerated improvements. Lipner at Microsoft, inventor of successful Security Development Lifecycle, incidentally thought the same thing.<p>Least Rust team is trying to fix problems and evolve in a robust way. That&#x27;s quite rare for mainstream stuff that I&#x27;ve seen.