I don't have anywhere near your level of experience with Rust. But yeah that's been surprising to me too. I still think I'd rank it behind Go and Python for a

I don't have anywhere near your level of experience with Rust. But yeah that's been surprising to me too. I still think I'd rank it behind Go and Python for a typical website backend - but it depends on the project and the team. The more people involved, the more things the type system will save you from, and the more you benefit from being able to build powerful abstractions - which offsets the relatively higher "tax" on productivity with it. Rust is one of the better choices for backend web development today, a sentence I also find surprising just to write. Honestly, probably the biggest thing holding it back for that use case is not the language itself but lack of adoption. It's tougher to hire for, and has a less mature ecosystem. I feel the momentum is there and that will change over the next 5 years or so.