by ModernMech | 2025-11-11 15:02:44+00:00
> I agree it doesn't need to be very popular to survive. But...

I think that's the end of it then, yeah? We've established it's popular enough (you set a lower bound at Haskell, which has been around for 35 years, has an active and vibrant community, and is still used in industry), we agree it doesn't need to be more popular, so then this threshold of "very popular" you invented (which I guess is the top 10) is arbitrary and therefore not relevent.

> Ok, but Go and TypeScript are pretty much the same age, and when Java came out, it took over much of C++'s market very quickly.

These two languages were created and pushed by two of the largest corporations on the planet. Typescript is basically Javascript++, and it came at a time when Javascript was to a large degree the only language for the browser. So they had: 1) one of the largest corporations in the world backing it with effectively unlimited money as part of a larger campaign to win web developer mindshare 2) a large developer base of people who already spoke the language 3) guaranteed job opportunities (at least at Microsoft, so more quickly followed) for people who invested in it. Microsoft was also instrumental in defining the platform on which Typescript ran, so they had that benefit as well. That's one way to achieve success for a language, but it requires only offering a very small delta in features; Typescript could only do what it did by being Javascript + types.

Likewise with Go, they bootstrapped that community with Googlers. Bootstrapping a community is way harder than bootstrapping a language, so having a built-in community is quite an advantage. People wanted to learn Go just to have it on their resume, because they heard it would help them land a job there. Plenty of my students took that route. Google threw their weight around where they could for Go, even going as far as to steal the name right out from another language developer and telling him to pound sand when he complained about it.

I mean, Google could afford to hire Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, AND Ken Thompson to create Go; whereas Rust came from the side project of a lowly Mozilla software engineer. We're looking at two very different levels of investment in these respective languages.

This seems to me like cherry picking. You're taking the best-case scenarios and then comparing it to something not like that at all. When it pales in comparison, you conclude it's not sufficient. But here's the thing: if we want programming as a field to evolve, not every new language can be ExistingLang++. Some languages are going to have to take big swings, and they're not going to be as popular as the easy road (big swings mean big divisions and polarized views; Javascript + types is an easy and agreeable idea). That doesn't mean they aren't just as if not more beneficial to programming languages as a field.

> But there are more programmers today, and many more people worked on Rust than on C++ in its early years.

Yes, and that completely muddles your point, which is why these comparisons don't make sense. It's like comparing the success of a new NFL team to teams from 50 years ago. Yeah they're ostensibly playing the same game but in many important ways they're actually not.

So at best in order to make the claim you're trying to make, you'd have to normalize the data from then and now. You haven't done that so you can't say Rust hasn't achieved arbitrary threshold of popularity after 10 years and therefore... I'm not exactly sure what your conclusion is actually. Therefore it won't survive? Therefore it's not all people make it out to be? I don't know, you're not being clear.

> But popularity is a measure of the actual benefit a language brings or, at least, lack of popularity is a measure of lack of sufficient benefit

If you're going to make this claim you've gotta back it up with some data. "popular", "actual benefit", "sufficient benefit" are all fuzzy words that mean one thing in your head but mean something different in everyone else. Many people live long enough to understand "popular" and "best" are not often synonymous.

> So claims that Rust is some huge game-changer don't really square with its rate of adoption.

Did anyone make that claim here? Rust is programming language like any other, and at best it's an incremental improvement over current languages, just like all of the top new languages of the last 50 years. The closest thing to a "game changer" I've seen is LLM vibe coding, but otherwise the game in Rust is the same as it's always been: 1) press keyboard buttons to write code in text buffer, 2) compile, 3) dodge bugs, 4) goto 1. Rust makes the first and second parts marginally worse, while making the third part marginally better. It doesn't change the game, but it makes it more fun to play (IMO).