We've been hearing this theory since Rust was a much smaller percentage of the total responses. With an order of magnitude more developers using the language,

We've been hearing this theory since Rust was a much smaller percentage of the total responses. With an order of magnitude more developers using the language, you'd expect this high "loved" rating to have slipped considerably, at least behind less commonly used languages, but it hasn't. So I no longer really buy this theory; I think it's centered in the idea that real improvements to programming languages aren't possible, and familiarity / enthusiasm trumps everything.