there is a culty vibe. if i had to speculate why, it's that a lot of the more zealous Rust programmers simply have never had the skills or wherewithal to write

there is a culty vibe. if i had to speculate why, it's that a lot of the more zealous Rust programmers simply have never had the skills or wherewithal to write in a systems programming language before. (I'd count myself in this category. I knew how to write half-assed scientific C++ but that's it.) it's pretty intoxicating to finally be able to write code without a garbage collector and not screw it up, and be able to use a modern package manager at the same time to get all kinds of nice dependencies. and getting over the borrow checker hump actually is one of those mind-expanding things like learning Lisp or Haskell is supposed to be. when I have to write C or C++ code now I have a little borrow checker living in my head helping me avoid mistakes. these are very exciting experiences and the kind of thing that inspires zealous evangelism. more experienced systems programmers, people who maintain major packages, and the Rust core team all seem to be a little more moderate in their enthusiasm even if they are huge fans of the language.