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Mozilla is using work on it's next generation layout engine, Servo, to fine tune a new language [fastcolabs.com] used for writing that layout engine. The new language, called Rust [wikipedia.org], started as a personal project of Greydon Hoare and has since grown to be sponsored by Mozilla and Samsung.

The Rust language will power Mozilla's new browser, Servo, and its big selling point is efficiency. Because C++ crashes when it runs into memory allocation issues, it weakens any browser that uses the language. Mozilla designed Rust to be superior to C++ this way, more easily isolating tasks and promote a process known as "work stealing," which is when tasks from an overloaded processor are shifted over to another one.

Rust is a general purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed by Mozilla Research. It is designed to be a "safe, concurrent, practical language", supporting pure-functional, concurrent-actor, imperative-procedural, and object-oriented styles.

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