And I think that's fine; Rust isn't trying to be the one language to rule them all. It's intended as a foundational language: your friend's streaming website survives despite his own code crashing often, but it won't survive if his off-the-shelf HTTP server crashes often (HTTP servers being the sort of thing one would write in Rust). Likewise, your mathematicians aren't going to be very productive if their Python interpreter crashes often (likewise, interpreters are the sort of thing one would also imagine writing in Rust).
Even in Rust's ideal future, very little of the code atop the stack is written in it. It's the code at the very bottom that underpins everything whose share it hopes to eat.
Re:The struggle with Rust
by sh_tinh_hair on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @01:30PM
(#13474074)
Dictatorial concepts in PL usually fail pretty badly. Rust may become the textbook example of a good idea too far. I'd certainly never use it or use anything written in it given a choice and/or time to rewrite in anything more accessible.
> or use anything written in it
As I often say on HN, I must be missing the sarcasm here...
I think "use" in this case is in the sense of a developer using code, rather than an end-user application.
E.G: one of my friend has a streaming website. He make banks with ads despite the site having problems all the time. He doesn't care the least. He is not an expert coder and just want to be able to build the features he needs, even if it's not perfect. Types are way too much for him. It took 2 years to master git basics.
Another example: my current clients are geomaticians. They code in Python a lot. They produce only small codes, and don't want something complex. They are experts in maps, not code, and love Python to have the balance of cost / reward they want.
HN is a bubble of expert devs, but the world is full of PHP plumbers, data manglers, sys admin and other professional that have a legitimate needs for "smooth brain to text programming".