You will probably get different answers from different people. For me it's interesting partly because I hope to get a language where managed memory is non-idio

You will probably get different answers from different people. For me it's interesting partly because I hope to get a language where managed memory is non-idiomatic and largely unnecessary while manual memory management is quite safe, i.e. no GC needed. This combined with what I've seen so far with regards to other language design choices makes me hope for something that can also approach C/C++ speeds together with broad portability - uc's (where a GC obviously is a no-no) to big iron nixes to OSX/Win to Android/iOS. Also, skipping things like GC I hope to be able to write drop-in replacements for C-libraries in Rust, with the application using the library being none the wiser. These are just a few reasons. If I am wrong to harbour any of these hopes, please correct me. Basically, I hope for good performance, portability and productivity. If I stalked the Rust github page any more often, they'd probably block my IP for DOSing... EDIT: Forgot to mention that I also hope for a large and supportive community - something I think we can already see the beginning of. People in #rust are very friendly and interesting 3rd party libraries are being produced as we speak despite the language and stdlib still being in a bit of flux. Community is so important. Also, Mozilla backing it is a big plus for me.