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> Given that Rust is quite an old language now and its adoption is still so low, So being part of 3 major OS (Windows, Android and now Linux), the big 3 cloud

> Given that Rust is quite an old language now and its adoption is still so low, So being part of 3 major OS (Windows, Android and now Linux), the big 3 cloud providers having SDKs for the language, used by so much tooling (js + python) and being part of major internet infrastructure means its “slow” adoption then wow…

pron 8mo ago
Very much so once you compare it to how quickly C++ (and, in fact, any language that's ever been in the top 5 or so) achieved similar milestones. Rust's adoption is very impressive when you compare it to, say, Haskell or Clojure, but not when you compare it to languages that achieved significant and long-lasting popularity. It's roughly similar to Ada's adoption when it was of a similar age (Ada was more prevalent then than Rust is now in some areas and less so in others). When work on Rust started twenty years ago, Java was younger than Rust is now. It was almost as close in time to the early work on C++ as we are now to the early work on Rust. Larger portions of operating systems were being written in C++ when it was younger than Rust is now. There's no denying Rust's popularity in open-source CLI dev tools for Python and JS/TS, but when you talk to C/C++ shops who've evaluated Rust and see how many of them end up using it (and to what extent) you see it's not like it's been with languages that ended up achieving real popularity (which includes not only super-popular languages like C, C++, and Java, but also mid-popular languages like Go).
- metaltyphoon 8mo ago
  > Very much so once you compare it to how quickly C++ C++ came out in 1985 and competed with C, COBOL, Pascal and FORTRAN. It was an overall improvement than those and therefore there is a legit reason for it to take off. > how many of them end up using it (and to what extent) you see it's not like it's been with languages that ended up achieving real popularity I assume many places that have a huge codebase in C++ would just do a port to Rust. That would almost always cause problems but for greenfield projects it's a no brainer IMO.
  - pron 8mo ago
    > It was an overall improvement than those and therefore there is a legit reason for it to take off. Of course. The rate of adoption is related to the increase in value compared to the status quo, much like how genes spread. But Rust's adoption is slow precisely because its "fitness benefit" is low. > That would almost always cause problems but for greenfield projects it's a no brainer IMO. It would have been a no brainer if, when writing a new codebase expected to last 20 years or more (which is often the case with software written in low-level languages), you'd believe the chosen language to be very popular over the next few deacdes. But given its slow adoption compared to languages that ended up achieving that status, despite it's rather old age, it's not looking like a safe bet, which is why Rust's adoption for important greenfield projects is also low (again, relative to other languages).
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  To this day C++ has hardly won the hearts of C devs on the embedded space, on both sides of the camp there are individuals that start religious discussions about the C/C++ abreviation, there is something like Orthodox C++ that basically means using C++ compiler to write what is mostly Better C, and most frameworks that were so hyped in the 1990's are now gone, or subsyst in maintenance contracts on applications that when the time gets to be rewritten it won't surely be C++. So even though C++ is the language I reach for outside Java, C#, TypeScript, I would assert that downplaying Rust adoption by Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, is losing track where things are going.
  - pron 8mo ago
    Downplaying compared to what? This kind of adoption is certainly something Haskell never gained. But all those companies (or analogous ones) adopted C++ much faster. In fact, they've adopted faster virtually every language they're using seriously. So it's a great achievement compared to every language they've never adopted at all, but not such a great achievement compared to every other language they have adopted. > that when the time gets to be rewritten it won't surely be C++. It looks like it won't be Rust, either. I mean, some may be written in Rust, but not the majority. My point is just that as much as some erstwhile Haskell fans have taken to Rust, comparing Rust's adoption to Haskell's - a language whose joke motto was "avoid success at all costs" - is not the right metric. Given that Rust's goal was to replace C++, its success should be compared to C++ and other languages that ended up achieving similar success. I'm saying that compared to them Rust's success has been mediocre, if that, and it's not a young language anymore by any stretch of the imagination.
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      I don't have a use for Rust on my daily work, and would rather see Java finally adopt the features it missed down from Oberon and Modula-3 for systems programming, however we will have to disagree on the "mediocre" adoption. So many language designers would dream to have such adoption numbers by tech giants for their hobby language.
      - 8mo ago
- kibwen 8mo ago
  > Very much so once you compare it to how quickly C++ (and, in fact, any language that's ever been in the top 5 or so) achieved similar milestones. No, this completely overestimates how quickly languages gain prominence. C came out in 1972 and didn't gain its current dominance until approximately the release of the ANSI C spec in 1989/1990, after 17 years. C++ came out in 1985 and didn't become the dominant language for gamedev until the late 90s (after it had its business-language-logic niche completely eaten by Java), after 14 years or so. Python came out in 1991 and labored as an obscure Perl alternative until the mid-late 2000s, after about 16 years (we can carbon-date the moment of its popularity by looking at when https://xkcd.com/353/ https://xkcd.com/353/ was released). Javascript came out in 1995 and was treated as a joke and/or afterthought in the broader programming discourse until Node.js came out in 2009, after 14 years. Rust is currently 11 years old, and it's doing quite excellently for its age.
  - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
    These languages have origin in a different era, without Reddit, Twitter or HN to spam about them, do we cannot really compare adoption rates.
    - kibwen 8mo ago
      No, this is silly. You can look at the availability and maturity of toolchains, the rate of release of projects written in that language, the rate of release of books and learning materials, the rate at which universities begin teaching the language, the volume of discourse devoted to that language in magazines and the online venues which did exist (e.g. Usenet), and crucially the declining metrics of all of the above for the direct competitors of that language.
      - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
        > availability and maturity of toolchains Pretty bad situation for Rust. > the rate of release of projects written in that language I guess back in 90s they didn't do grep clones every weekend, so Rust wins here definitely. > the rate of release of books and learning materials And what this data tells us? > the rate at which universities begin teaching the language Pretty bad situation for Rust. > the volume of discourse devoted to that language in magazines and the online venues which did exist (e.g. Usenet) But you need to normalize this volume against total volume of content out there produced every second, and then situation becomes complicated. > crucially the declining metrics of all of the above for the direct competitors of that language Why ignore job offerings?

pron 8mo ago

Very much so once you compare it to how quickly C++ (and, in fact, any language that's ever been in the top 5 or so) achieved similar milestones. Rust's adoption is very impressive when you compare it to, say, Haskell or Clojure, but not when you compare it to languages that achieved significant and long-lasting popularity. It's roughly similar to Ada's adoption when it was of a similar age (Ada was more prevalent then than Rust is now in some areas and less so in others). When work on Rust started twenty years ago, Java was younger than Rust is now. It was almost as close in time to the early work on C++ as we are now to the early work on Rust. Larger portions of operating systems were being written in C++ when it was younger than Rust is now. There's no denying Rust's popularity in open-source CLI dev tools for Python and JS/TS, but when you talk to C/C++ shops who've evaluated Rust and see how many of them end up using it (and to what extent) you see it's not like it's been with languages that ended up achieving real popularity (which includes not only super-popular languages like C, C++, and Java, but also mid-popular languages like Go).

metaltyphoon 8mo ago
> Very much so once you compare it to how quickly C++ C++ came out in 1985 and competed with C, COBOL, Pascal and FORTRAN. It was an overall improvement than those and therefore there is a legit reason for it to take off. > how many of them end up using it (and to what extent) you see it's not like it's been with languages that ended up achieving real popularity I assume many places that have a huge codebase in C++ would just do a port to Rust. That would almost always cause problems but for greenfield projects it's a no brainer IMO.
- pron 8mo ago
  > It was an overall improvement than those and therefore there is a legit reason for it to take off. Of course. The rate of adoption is related to the increase in value compared to the status quo, much like how genes spread. But Rust's adoption is slow precisely because its "fitness benefit" is low. > That would almost always cause problems but for greenfield projects it's a no brainer IMO. It would have been a no brainer if, when writing a new codebase expected to last 20 years or more (which is often the case with software written in low-level languages), you'd believe the chosen language to be very popular over the next few deacdes. But given its slow adoption compared to languages that ended up achieving that status, despite it's rather old age, it's not looking like a safe bet, which is why Rust's adoption for important greenfield projects is also low (again, relative to other languages).
pjmlp 8mo ago
To this day C++ has hardly won the hearts of C devs on the embedded space, on both sides of the camp there are individuals that start religious discussions about the C/C++ abreviation, there is something like Orthodox C++ that basically means using C++ compiler to write what is mostly Better C, and most frameworks that were so hyped in the 1990's are now gone, or subsyst in maintenance contracts on applications that when the time gets to be rewritten it won't surely be C++. So even though C++ is the language I reach for outside Java, C#, TypeScript, I would assert that downplaying Rust adoption by Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, is losing track where things are going.
- pron 8mo ago
  Downplaying compared to what? This kind of adoption is certainly something Haskell never gained. But all those companies (or analogous ones) adopted C++ much faster. In fact, they've adopted faster virtually every language they're using seriously. So it's a great achievement compared to every language they've never adopted at all, but not such a great achievement compared to every other language they have adopted. > that when the time gets to be rewritten it won't surely be C++. It looks like it won't be Rust, either. I mean, some may be written in Rust, but not the majority. My point is just that as much as some erstwhile Haskell fans have taken to Rust, comparing Rust's adoption to Haskell's - a language whose joke motto was "avoid success at all costs" - is not the right metric. Given that Rust's goal was to replace C++, its success should be compared to C++ and other languages that ended up achieving similar success. I'm saying that compared to them Rust's success has been mediocre, if that, and it's not a young language anymore by any stretch of the imagination.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    I don't have a use for Rust on my daily work, and would rather see Java finally adopt the features it missed down from Oberon and Modula-3 for systems programming, however we will have to disagree on the "mediocre" adoption. So many language designers would dream to have such adoption numbers by tech giants for their hobby language.
    - 8mo ago
kibwen 8mo ago
> Very much so once you compare it to how quickly C++ (and, in fact, any language that's ever been in the top 5 or so) achieved similar milestones. No, this completely overestimates how quickly languages gain prominence. C came out in 1972 and didn't gain its current dominance until approximately the release of the ANSI C spec in 1989/1990, after 17 years. C++ came out in 1985 and didn't become the dominant language for gamedev until the late 90s (after it had its business-language-logic niche completely eaten by Java), after 14 years or so. Python came out in 1991 and labored as an obscure Perl alternative until the mid-late 2000s, after about 16 years (we can carbon-date the moment of its popularity by looking at when https://xkcd.com/353/ https://xkcd.com/353/ was released). Javascript came out in 1995 and was treated as a joke and/or afterthought in the broader programming discourse until Node.js came out in 2009, after 14 years. Rust is currently 11 years old, and it's doing quite excellently for its age.
- wolvesechoes 8mo ago
  These languages have origin in a different era, without Reddit, Twitter or HN to spam about them, do we cannot really compare adoption rates.
  - kibwen 8mo ago
    No, this is silly. You can look at the availability and maturity of toolchains, the rate of release of projects written in that language, the rate of release of books and learning materials, the rate at which universities begin teaching the language, the volume of discourse devoted to that language in magazines and the online venues which did exist (e.g. Usenet), and crucially the declining metrics of all of the above for the direct competitors of that language.
    - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
      > availability and maturity of toolchains Pretty bad situation for Rust. > the rate of release of projects written in that language I guess back in 90s they didn't do grep clones every weekend, so Rust wins here definitely. > the rate of release of books and learning materials And what this data tells us? > the rate at which universities begin teaching the language Pretty bad situation for Rust. > the volume of discourse devoted to that language in magazines and the online venues which did exist (e.g. Usenet) But you need to normalize this volume against total volume of content out there produced every second, and then situation becomes complicated. > crucially the declining metrics of all of the above for the direct competitors of that language Why ignore job offerings?