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Comment by jen20

3 days ago

I'm not sure I'd call Rust a "niche language" any more (perhaps in ~2018) - it's in common use across many big technology companies.

18 comments

jen20

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homebrewer  3 days ago

It is extremely niche outside of this bubble.

  • mmoskal  2 days ago

    According to Stack Overflow developer survey [0] Rust is at 12.5%, roughly a half of C# or Java and a quarter of Python. Also more than twice Ruby. So definitely not niche.

    [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular...

    • throwaway2037  2 days ago

      To be clear, that developer survey asked:

          > Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year?

      It does not ask if you are gainfully employed and using this language for your job.

      Also, in the same results, just above Rust, I see:

          > PowerShell 13.8%

      <sarcasm> So, I guess that we can safely say that Microsoft PowerShell is still more popular than Rust. </sarcasm>

      1 reply →

    • askonomm  2 days ago

      In my mind not niche means having jobs, and Rust has no jobs, not in any meaningful amount at least, and none at all in most countries. That puts it deep in the niche category for me.

      1 reply →

    • trott  1 day ago

      > According to Stack Overflow developer survey [0] Rust is at 12.5%, ... So definitely not niche.

      The annual survey is very popular in the Rust community. Its results are often used for advocacy. Participation by Rust developers is very high. So what you have is a classic case of a selection bias.

  • sterlind  2 days ago

    MS is starting to use Rust pretty extensively internally. That's a lot of developers outside the "bubble."

  • vlovich123  2 days ago

    F# will likely remain niche forever. It’s likely that Rust will not given its growing and accelerating adoption by Microsoft, Google and the Linux Kernel.

    It just takes time to defeat the 40+ years of c and c++ dominance.

    • DeathArrow  2 days ago

      I will take C, C++ or Zig over Rust any day. For some people, like me, the Rust way of doing things isn't a good fit. It's not a model I enjoy working with.

      I like F#, Haskell, Elixir but not Rust.

DeathArrow  2 days ago

Just look at the job market. There are far more jobs for Go programmers and Go isn't particularly huge.

Compared with C/C++, Java, C#, Javascript, Python, Typescript, PHP, all the rest can be considered niche.