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Rust is loved and has momentum. I'm not sure it's universally adopted by pragmatists, partly because it requires replacing pip, Maven, node, yum, or whatnot wit

Rust is loved and has momentum. I'm not sure it's universally adopted by pragmatists, partly because it requires replacing pip, Maven, node, yum, or whatnot with cargo. Cargo is great if you're starting from nothing, but it's not very pragmatic to ignore all your existing code and experience and form another ecosystem within your organization. There's probably a limit to how many code ecosystems you want in your org, even in large and well-funded ones.

nindalf 3y ago
No, you're mistaking the point about pragmatists. It's not necessary for every pragmatist to adopt it for every project in order to succeed, just a critical mass of them. In Rust's case, enough large, medium and small companies have adopted it that it continue to be a thing a decade from now. Google alone has a large vested interest in ensuring the continued development and ecosystem health of Rust, because it uses it for critical components in Android. Android isn't going away, nor will they rewrite their Bluetooth stack (https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/Bluetooth/+/refs/heads/main https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/B...) and Binder (WIP - https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20231101-rust-binder-v1-0-08ba9197f637@google.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20231101-rust-binder-...) again in some other language. Now extend the same argument to the projects within AWS, Microsoft, Meta and others that depend on Rust and can't rewrite their Rust projects without a massive investment. The point isn't that all new code at the pragmatists must be written in the new language. A few critical projects are, adoption within the pragmatists continues to grow with time. This allows a new company thinking of adopting Rust to easily answer the question - "Will it be around in 10 years? Will the ecosystem still be thriving? Will it be easy to hire for this?" It's a likely "yes" to all 3, because so many pragmatists are invested in making it so (https://foundation.rust-lang.org/static/publications/annual-reports/annual-report-2022.pdf https://foundation.rust-lang.org/static/publications/annual-... - See "Member Overview"). All of these companies are literally paying tens or hundreds of thousands per year to help the ecosystem flourish.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  D has been around for 20+ years now.
  - nindalf 3y ago
    It has, but it wasn't adopted by the pragmatists in that time. It's hard to tell if the early adopters adopted it either - It doesn't show up at all in the 2023 stack overflow survey (nor in the previous two years) - https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#technology-most-popular-technologies https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#technology-most-popula... - It doesn't show up in questions asked on Stackoverflow since 2008 - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=kotlin%2Crust%2Ctypescript%2Cswift%2Cd https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=kotlin%2Crust... - Nor on Google insights - https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2012-07-31%202022-07-29&q=%2Fm%2F0_lcrx4,%2Fm%2F0dsbpg6,%2Fm%2F0n50hxv,%2Fm%2F010sd4y3,D%20programming%20language https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2012-07-31%202... But maybe there is a different data set that shows early adopters adopting D. But for me, I would say a language has been adopted by early adopters when it reaches 1% of all developers in a reasonably large survey. Given that, it's entirely fair for a company making a language decision now to ask if D will still be around in 10 years.

nindalf 3y ago

No, you're mistaking the point about pragmatists. It's not necessary for every pragmatist to adopt it for every project in order to succeed, just a critical mass of them. In Rust's case, enough large, medium and small companies have adopted it that it continue to be a thing a decade from now. Google alone has a large vested interest in ensuring the continued development and ecosystem health of Rust, because it uses it for critical components in Android. Android isn't going away, nor will they rewrite their Bluetooth stack (https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/Bluetooth/+/refs/heads/main https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/B...) and Binder (WIP - https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20231101-rust-binder-v1-0-08ba9197f637@google.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20231101-rust-binder-...) again in some other language. Now extend the same argument to the projects within AWS, Microsoft, Meta and others that depend on Rust and can't rewrite their Rust projects without a massive investment. The point isn't that all new code at the pragmatists must be written in the new language. A few critical projects are, adoption within the pragmatists continues to grow with time. This allows a new company thinking of adopting Rust to easily answer the question - "Will it be around in 10 years? Will the ecosystem still be thriving? Will it be easy to hire for this?" It's a likely "yes" to all 3, because so many pragmatists are invested in making it so (https://foundation.rust-lang.org/static/publications/annual-reports/annual-report-2022.pdf https://foundation.rust-lang.org/static/publications/annual-... - See "Member Overview"). All of these companies are literally paying tens or hundreds of thousands per year to help the ecosystem flourish.

WalterBright 3y ago
D has been around for 20+ years now.
- nindalf 3y ago
  It has, but it wasn't adopted by the pragmatists in that time. It's hard to tell if the early adopters adopted it either - It doesn't show up at all in the 2023 stack overflow survey (nor in the previous two years) - https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#technology-most-popular-technologies https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#technology-most-popula... - It doesn't show up in questions asked on Stackoverflow since 2008 - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=kotlin%2Crust%2Ctypescript%2Cswift%2Cd https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=kotlin%2Crust... - Nor on Google insights - https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2012-07-31%202022-07-29&q=%2Fm%2F0_lcrx4,%2Fm%2F0dsbpg6,%2Fm%2F0n50hxv,%2Fm%2F010sd4y3,D%20programming%20language https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2012-07-31%202... But maybe there is a different data set that shows early adopters adopting D. But for me, I would say a language has been adopted by early adopters when it reaches 1% of all developers in a reasonably large survey. Given that, it's entirely fair for a company making a language decision now to ask if D will still be around in 10 years.