Lots of stuff where X != Rust.
> (why would an end user care?)
They probably don't. But, on GitHub, where programmers go, and on a forum like this, with lots of developers, this means something to many folks here.
Also, beyond that, note my "many"; sure, it doesn't mean anything to you. It feels weird to get upset about something that supposedly has no meaning, though. When I see something that's "written in X" and I don't care about X, I just move on with my day. If I post about how much I don't care about X, it really seems like I do actually care about X, otherwise, I wouldn't take the time to complain about it.
(The OP of this thread said that they did care, negatively. And you didn't explicitly say you don't care either. But this attitude is common and is also elsewhere in this thread so, let me just finally jump off this soapbox real quick...)
I do agree that I'd rather see the technology choice not highlighted so much, though. But it really is a proxy for some things that matter to me: if it is in Rust, I expect it to be a single binary I can easily install and which starts up quickly and performs well (as opposed to, say, javascript, python, ruby, or java programs), but is likely to suffer very few security problems (as opposed to, say, a C or C++ program), and has a decent shot at growing an active community, which I may be able to contribute to. A lot of these things apply to other technologies (like the aforementioned Go) as well, but it I do feel like I get some information by knowing the technology.
Maybe the better approach would be to enumerate benefits rather than saying what the technology is, even if the benefits flow from the technology choice.
That means the solution often ends up being written Go, Rust or C/C++, to the extent that Go and Rust specifically also turn out to be good signalling that the application may meet my other requirements, partly simply because they are relatively new languages. They also seem to signal better thought out and more “serious” solutions, perhaps because of the barrier to entry they present vs interpreted and scripting languages.
So yeah. Rust or other languages certainly aren’t a requirement but they do sometimes present some useful signalling.
Nothing has put me off of Rust more than "Rust people". The same thing happened to me with Python over 20 years ago and I've successfully (and happily) avoided that language for over 20 years because of just how unbelievably, unstoppably "effervescent" Python people were in the late 1990s. If Python were 10% as good as those people said is was, it would be, by a wide margin, mankind's greatest achievement for the next 10 millennia.
I get the exact same vibe from "Rustaceans."
I mean it can have a crappy UI, and not do what you want it to, but at least you won't have a memory leak.
I think for most applications, written in rust shouldn't be a selling point, but things such a cURL can definitely benefit from it
I mean, I very rarely see non-rust projects say "Written in X!" as a selling point for the end user (why would an end user care?), and the campaign to re-write everything in rust is similarly irritating. I've never explored or read up on the rust community, but the sheer insistence that I see jutting into everything from the outside turns me off.