"How about Docker? V8/node? Most of the wasm ecosystem dates from that period." Not a replacement of any previous tech, not a replacement of previous tech, and

"How about Docker? V8/node? Most of the wasm ecosystem dates from that period." Not a replacement of any previous tech, not a replacement of previous tech, and not a replacement of previous tech respectively. You were suggesting Rust must replace things like "zlib, libjpeg, readline". These are not the same sort of thing. It is "zlib, libjpeg, readline" I was suggesting is far too high a bar to clear to say a language is succeeding; I mean, what other language has replaced them either? It isn't just Rust failing to displace C from those places, it's all the languages. I don't even know what it would take for a language to actively replace C in those positions. What could a language possibly offer to overcome the cost of throwing all that code away? "Actually there was a huge window with TLS implementations once the community collectively decided to move away from openssl, too." This is closer to valid, but still a huge ask. Rust may not have done it but neither did anybody else; SSL is still C. Now you've shifted the question from "Why doesn't Rust successfully replace existing tech?", which is what I was saying is effectively impossible, to the question "Why doesn't Rust have a killer app?". This is a fine question to ask; I don't attack you for asking it. I'm merely defending my original characterization. Still, I suspect Rust is like Go; while there is definitely a significant set of apps now that are implemented in Go that people use because they are the best-of-breed and not because they are Go, I expect that usage is dwarfed by usage of Go that you never see. I see Rust coming up around me in places where it's just happening organically, unrelated to HN.