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Rust, C++, and Python trends in jobs on Hacker News (February 2025)
- Terretta 2y agoAre posts not mentioning any languages? Are posts dwindling, which means Rust is actually going through the roof? Is some other language the one with rising demand? Needs some kind of baseline ...
- booleandilemma 2y agoMaybe there's another language people are mentioning that isn't Rust, C++, or Python?
- raffraffraff 2y agoMe, on seeing the post: "I'm learning go. Oh my god am I making a mistake? Oh no. Oh no. Oh no."
- johnnyanmac 2y agoUnless you're trying to work for a very specific Google team, probably. Not that I subscribe to the idea that engineers can't learn the tools on the job as long as they have fundamentals, but this market is so rough as is.
- jeremyjh 2y agoYes, since everything is declining, I'm left assuming that this is just an absolute count not normalized for the total number of postings. And we're seeing the total number declining.
- feverzsj 2y agoIt's just Hacker News attracts more rust users, so more rust jobs here. You can search on actual job sites. Rust jobs are still rare.
- pjmlp 2y agoDefinitely, doing this on a game development board, or data engineering would give completely different numbers.
- weinzierl 2y agoLinkedIn doesn't even recognize Rust as a language you can select. You can select Perl, Fortran and Cobol, but Rust? Crickets. I asked them half a year ago if they would add it. I included a few sources, e.g. the StackOvflow survey and a couple of sources that showed LinkedIn's parent Microsoft's investment in Rust, but I only got stock answers. So, Rust has some way to go.
- koakuma-chan 2y agoI doubt you can "ask" a company like LinkedIn. Your best chance is probably their Twitter account manager responding to your tweet.
- throw-the-towel 2y agoWhat exactly do you mean? I do have Rust as a "skill" on my LinkedIn, for what it's worth.
- weinzierl 2y ago"Skills" is a free-form field, I can add "foobar cook" as a skill if I like. I mean the "What kind of work you are open to" section that is relevant for being matched to open positions. I just rechecked a moment ago and still no way express that I am open for Rust positions.
- Sharlin 2y agoI wonder if that's telling more about LinkedIn than Rust.
- weinzierl 2y ago... and in extension about Microsoft. When it comes to Rust they definitely talk the talk but do that walk the walk too?
- Xebenebex 2y agoI’m so confused by this graph, it seems to literally just confirm that hiring is way down across the board. The relationship between language popularity seems mostly the same (maybe less python?)
- marifjeren 2y agoThe chart titles say "frequency" but the y axis seems to be ambiguous about whether it's an absolute count of mentions or mentions-per-word or mentions-per-something-else. The distinction is important because if it's an absolute count, I think these data would mostly just correlate with the job market overall. In that case, splitting it out by language is sort of uninteresting.
- fdsf111 2y agoThe number of mentions needs to be normalized by the number of job posts. Example: - 2021-01: posts=842, python=194, ratio = 194 / 842 = 0.23 (mentions per post) - 2025-01: posts=487, python=87, ratio = 87 / 487 = 0.18 And then if you want to see a trend, do a moving 6 months average. [2021-01] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25632982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25632982 [2025-01] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42575537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42575537
- math_dandy 2y agoNumber of job posts itself seems like a better measure of the state of the job market than mentions or mention-density. What aspects might mentions capture that number of postings wouldn’t?
- internet101010 2y agoIt would capture the shift in need for each language.
- snek_case 2y agoThere's also the popularity of HN itself and the popularity of posting jobs on HN that's an important factor. You could both normalize the figures and include a separate graph for job posting density per month or something like that. Total posts on HN monthly would also be interesting to visualize. Is it trending up or down?
- bb88 2y agoThere's also the popularity for HN based upon the particular language. It's possible there's skew where rust becomes more popular say, and gets the bulk of the new posts, but python or java aren't super interesting anymore. So those people stop showing up to HN. I'd like to see the popularity of posts by language. I bet we'd see a lot fewer Java and Python posts compared to Rust.
- mountaineer 2y agoYeah, I found the percentage of job posts with the keyword in https://www.hntrends.com https://www.hntrends.com when I was publishing it, was effective.
- amazingamazing 2y agoWhy just these three languages?
- millerm 2y agoI’ve been a developer since the 90s. Mainly on the JVM, some Objective-C, and too much JavaScript garbage. I would gladly take a junior position, making junior pay if I could get an entry-level Rust gig. I know that’s not going to happen, but I sure would like it too.
- roland35 2y agoToo many rust jobs are in crypto or web3 stuff right now. Even if you like that tech, it's pretty undeniable that those industries are boom/bust and quite risky.
- convolvatron 2y agoThere are fewer rust jobs, but those that are there are reallly pretty desperate. Most have stopped agreeing to train people because of the time involved, and the risk someone won’t really take to it. Learn rust in your own to a basic fluency and you’ll be able to find a job
- millerm 2y agoOh, I've taken the time to learn the language and tooling. It means I would take a junior position, and I don't mind that. I'm not chasing money anymore, I just want to enjoy what I do again, because I don't anymore.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
- high_na_euv 2y ago>As a proxy measure for programming language trends, let’s analyze the frequency of programming language mentions in the monthly “Ask HN: Who is hiring?” and “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?” postings on Hacker News for a few years up until February 2025. Below are the graphs. Thats terrible proxy
- kevmo314 2y agoThe article didn't claim it was a good proxy.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoBad for general trends for what jobs are you there. Good to help confirm a general trend of declining job posting and rising job seekers. Honestly a bit surprised how steady the increase is. Guess that "the market will bounce back here" hasn't come true at any small point in time.
- jszymborski 2y agoIf im reading this right this counts the absolute number of mentions rather than relative. Seeing as the number of job postings is rapidly decreasing (and presumably "Who is hiring" is increasing), the 'rising' trends here are greatly confounded.
- softwaredoug 2y agoI wonder if Python knowledge is just assumed now. Whereas these other languages would not be...
- koakuma-chan 2y agoYou don't need "X language knowledge," you just need the general knowledge, and more importantly experience.
- usrbinenv 2y agoI wish this was true. You can't even get hired if you're proficient in a language, but don't know framework X. Which is understandable for, say Ruby (I don't know anyone who knows Ruby, but doesn't know Rails), but it's inexcusable for JavaScript. I've been programming JavaScript since like 1997. Sure, I'll pick up React no problem, but I won't be touching it unless I'm paid, because React is a disgrace. But it's not just these languages. It's every other language pretty much. You want to be hired as Go dev? Better know how to use gRPC and Kafka. Java? Better know Spring. I can go on and on.
- koakuma-chan 2y agoI would argue that gRPC and Kafka is "general knowledge" in the sense that these are language-agnostic. In other words there is no requirement "Go language knowledge," but a requirement "gRPC and Kafka knowledge."
- usrbinenv 2y agoIt really isn't. It's very much tied to certain stacks, while it's completely uncommon in others stacks, because they're solving the same problems in a different way. I've never touched it in my life. Sure, I can pick it up, but I fail to see how it should be considered common.
- koakuma-chan 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ttul 2y agoMight I suggest using `mdates.AutoDateLocator()` on your x-axis to reduce the number of date labels?
- svilen_dobrev 2y agohas anyone noticed how the hiring vs hired look like complement to each-other? i.e. python is needed -> people learn it -> and then no need anymore -> lots of people with python looking for job..
- koakuma-chan 2y ago-> lots of people complaining that rust doesn't have a django alternative
- johnnyanmac 2y agoWell, few people are scrambling for C++ jobs but it has a similar trend. I'm assuming it's something more general like influx of graduates into a weak market.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThose trendlines are somewhat bogus because there is a COVID induced bump [1] that is hidden here by the cutoff at 2021. Add another five years and the slopes will be less steep. [1] https://hnhiring.com/trends https://hnhiring.com/trends
- johnnyanmac 2y agoStill seems to be the same trend for everything except some certain web tech. Jobs today are roughly half of ore-covid levels.
- wojciii 2y agoI write rust, c++ and python for a living. All in the same project. Learning rust was painfull. I tolerate c++, but I find modern c++ hard to understand. I hate gcc c++ error messages. They are the worst kind of error messages that I know. Using Python for system testing is a godsend. This is where it shines .. but using poetry for package management is painful.
- fouronnes3 2y agoQuality of error messages is a really interesting quality metric. At the far worst end of the spectrum I nominate the latex compiler. "Missing $ inserted" anyone? What's the other extreme?
- wojciii 2y agoIt should be a metric for compilers. The Rust compiler is also hard to understand while learning the launage but it gets easier when you know more Rust.
- daviddavis 2y agoHave you tried uv? I switched to it from poetry a couple months ago. It’s not perfect but I’m enjoying it a lot more than poetry.
- wojciii 2y agoI could switch and plan to evaluate it soon. :)
- boyka 2y agoAbsolute numbers are on a downward trend. But how about relative interest as a percentage of total?
- zamalek 2y agoHow is the hiring experience? I'm considering Rust (or Elixir, or Go) for the next project at work. We'd obviously need to be able to hire teammates or replacements (as I'm the only current employee with tons of experience beyond C#).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gorkaerana 2y agoI cannot quite replicate those results myself: https://github.com/gorkaerana/hn-programming-language-trends https://github.com/gorkaerana/hn-programming-language-trends. In my analysis, as a percentage of total job posts, Python jobs start to rapidly increase in 2022, even before the current AI craze started by the release of ChatGPT on November 20 2022. They peaked in 2024 and seem to have stalled since. Rust and C++ jobs (again, as a percentage of total job posts), have gone toe-to-toe since mid 2023. That being said, many improvements to be done to my analysis, as it relies on simple word match.
- hughdbrown 2y agoI am not sure I believe the numbers shown here. More jobs offered in Rust than C++? I would not think so. I think that many of the hits on 'rust' in the job postings are actually 'trust': ``` >>> import requests >>> page_id = 42919502 # Feb 2025 >>> url = f"https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/{page_id} https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/{page_id}" >>> resp = requests.get(url, headers={'Accept': 'application/json'}) >>> data = resp.json() >>> sum('rust' in child['text'].lower() for child in data['children']) 42 >>> sum('trust' in child['text'].lower() for child in data['children']) 13 ``` Check out the gist here: https://gist.github.com/hughdbrown/f41f5f3c072067c2351460d8d3a739d0 https://gist.github.com/hughdbrown/f41f5f3c072067c2351460d8d... It shows that 30-40% of 'rust' is really 'trust': ``` -------------------- 2025-02-01: rust = 42 trust = 13 -------------------- 2025-01-01: rust = 28 trust = 10 -------------------- 2024-12-01: rust = 32 trust = 14 -------------------- 2024-11-01: rust = 28 trust = 8 -------------------- 2024-10-01: rust = 36 trust = 12 -------------------- 2024-09-01: rust = 32 trust = 9 -------------------- 2024-08-01: rust = 36 trust = 10 -------------------- 2024-07-01: rust = 33 trust = 11 -------------------- 2024-06-01: rust = 36 trust = 15 -------------------- 2024-05-01: rust = 42 trust = 14 -------------------- 2024-04-01: rust = 30 trust = 12 -------------------- 2024-03-01: rust = 32 trust = 12 -------------------- 2024-02-01: rust = 25 trust = 10 -------------------- 2024-01-01: rust = 22 trust = 8 ``` I have a python repo specifically for finding Rust action in Who Is Hiring: https://github.com/hughdbrown/who-is-hiring https://github.com/hughdbrown/who-is-hiring