It will be competing with .Net and Java, not with C and C++ I would formulate this a bit milder: many desktop applications are written in C++ and many system a

It will be competing with .Net and Java, not with C and C++ I would formulate this a bit milder: many desktop applications are written in C++ and many system applications (e.g. UNIX command-line tools) could be written in Swift or Go. So, there are certainly areas where C++, Rust, Go, and Swift are or will be in competition. Of course, if you require strong safety guarantees and the absence of a garbage collector, Rust is probably the only modern option.