Not OP and not choosing a side in this thread on the RIIR topic, but I would like to address why I like Rust over those other language - in addition to memory safety, I really like the stronger types (specifically sum types), the move semantics, and the data-race safety.

I know Rust is a systems programming language, but I've been playing with it for some time writing high-level stuff like REST/GraphQL APIs, websockets and web backends in general. And I have to admit it is a breath of fresh air.

No crazy enforced OOP with a gazillion classes and inheritance, no non-sense design patterns just because the language enforces you to use OOP for everything, an amazing type system, no null pointer exceptions, great compiler error messages and so on...

Of course there are problems, like any other language, but it is crazy how it as a systems programming language is so good at expressing domain logic.

Java has a much bigger ecosystem, but judging JUST by the language design, I'd pick Rust over Java without thinking twice.