I'm a very senior engineer. I've had a strong desire to find a better alternative to C++ since the 90s when I was first exposed to it (I worked with it for about a decade, after a few years with C). Now, decades later, enough bandaids have been applied that it's somewhat tolerable. Congratulations...?

The industry has needed good alternatives for a long time. Finally, they're coming, and not nearly soon enough to suit me! :-)

I believe you're right about those alternatives not coming soon enough. If all things go right, by the time Rust will be (sort of) mainstream you'll be able to set up the "Rusty Grampas League" :-)

What are thoughts on D?

"pragmatic /praɡˈmatɪk/ adjective dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations."

I consider Rust more pragmatic at this point. Perhaps it's because I code in C++ as my dayjob and have to deal with the consequences.

In theory, C++ is perfect given perfect developers. In practice, it's more sensible and realistic to write tricky, like multithreaded, code in Rust.

One rarely mentioned important factor: fear. It's much less scary to modify something written in Rust than in C++. Doubly so for less experienced developers.

I'd wager we actually have a lot of clever teenagers here at HN. Well-meaning, but has never worked in a team nor has any experience of what the market rewards.

Technically robotics isn't mainstream, Javascript/PHP/Java/C# are, at least in terms of developers. Now in terms of code deployed, C on the billions of embedded devices may be able to compete with servers?