[elbear]

How I interpret his comment about the distance: The benefit of switching from C/C++ to Rust is higher than switching from C++ to Go (in the similar use-cases) or from Java to Kotlin.

Another argument offered for Rust is that it's high-level enough that you can also use it for the web (see how many web frameworks it has). So I think that Rust's proponents see it as this universal language that could be good for everything.

[9rx]

> The benefit of switching from C/C++ to Rust is higher than switching from C++ to Go

Ten years ago the memory model was a compelling benefit, sure, but nowadays we have Fil-C, that C++ static analyzer posted here yesterday, etc. There is some remaining marginal benefit that C and C++ still haven't quite caught up with yet, but is that significantly smaller and continually shrinking gap sufficient to explain things as they stand today?

You are right that the aforementioned assumption did not play out in the end. It turns out that C++ developers did, in fact, choose C++ because of C++ and would have never selected Python even if Python was the fastest language out there. Although, funnily enough, a "faster Python" ended up being appealing to Python developers so Go does ultimately have the same story, except around Python (and Ruby) instead of C++.

> Another argument offered for Rust is that it's high-level enough that you can also use it for the web

It was able to do that ten years ago just as well. That doesn't really explain things either.