[jwatt]

I'm not sure it's "desperately" chasing; its trajectory looks positive. For example, in the 2019 Stack Overflow developer survey[1] only 3% of professional developers reported using Rust. A year later[2] it was 4.8% and a year after that[3] it was 6.4%. So based on that metric (of debatable value), professional developer use may have doubled in two years. For reference, in the SO surveys C++ and C use was about 20% and 16%, respectively and, if anything, slowly declining (as a percentage of respondents, of course).

1. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...

2. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-pr...

3. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-mo...

[ncmncm]

That is a deeply biased sample. Easily more people pick up C++ for professional use in any given week that the total paid to code Rust.

[kevin_thibedeau]

PHP had a positive trajectory too. Rust is riding a wave of interest but most are going to revolt against its complexity.

[wk_end]

That sounds plausible in the general case...but we’re putting it up against C++ here, which is at least as (probably more) complex.

[stouset]

Rust is literally the most beloved language in SO's developer survey and has been for several years running.

In my own experience, it's allowed me to write software that pretty much doesn't have bugs, and I say this as a 25 year veteran of being an engineer. The extra bits of complexity that are in the language allow me, the developer, to not have to write code to deal with that complexity in my own projects. It's handled for me.

Rust's primary competition is C and C++. It compares favorable on the overwhelming majority of axes against either. Not every one, but most.