IMO that "culty feeling" you're getting is the end result of a lot of very experienced engineers encountering Rust, going "holy shit", and trying to preach about it from the rooftops because it feels so much better than the things that have come before it.
I find this particularly compelling because Rust generally does not market itself towards novice developers. At least until very recently, I've seen Rust communities actively discourage novices from trying to learn Rust. Not that it's inherently a bad language to learn as one's first, but there just haven't been great resources for people to learn it if they don't already have some previous software experience. The net effect of this is that the enthusiasm you're seeing is coming from a much higher proportion than usual of people who've been in the industry awhile, and not from as many fresh college or bootcamp grads.
No, the culty feeling is this paragraph long explanation about how Rust is objectively good, paired with the downvotes I got from saying I feel like Rust is culty.
Pretty sure most experienced devs will say "use whatever works, there's some art out there written in erlang/JS/C++"
Case in point I think the most valid critique is that Rust is new and lacks a developed ecosystem. As an ML person myself it's not even useful for me to learn Rust unless I want to roll alot of my own stuff. So if your "experienced developers" are preaching about the best languages to promote, to learn as a hobby, etc.. they're not preaching about the best languages for prod unless it's for some specific application.
Also, fucking lmao, get over yourself, Rust isn't that hard to learn
And even if it were, being able to understand what is essentially wacky C++ doesn't mean you've "been in the industry awhile"
> No, the culty feeling is this paragraph long explanation about how Rust is objectively good
So to make sure I have this straight, based on your reply to the sub-thread, your objection is simply that I didn’t repeat the exact reasons why many believe Rust to be an improvement over languages that have come before it?
That wasn’t even the damn point of my reply, which was that given the enthusiasm you perceive as cultish behavior, here’s my take on the underlying reason.
Something tells me you’d have been even less happy had I launched into a lengthy breakdown of all the comparative advantages. It’s a no-win situation you’ve constructed. Congratulations, I guess?
> Pretty sure most experienced devs will say "use whatever works, there's some art out there written in erlang/JS/C++"
There’s art in Ruby and I love the language but it’s a terrible choice for long-term projects that grow to large team sizes. A language doesn’t have to completely replace all others to warrant enthusiasm. It doesn’t have to be better along every possible axis to warrant enthusiasm.
> Case in point I think the most valid critique is that Rust is new and lacks a developed ecosystem.
Ah yes, the favorite criticism of bitter and cynical engineers, right up to the moment they switch to “it’s old and crufty and the industry has moved on”. Oddly, none of these critiques ever seem to apply to the languages of one’s own choosing…
> As an ML person myself it's not even useful for me to learn Rust unless I want to roll alot of my own stuff.
Nobody anywhere is arguing any language is the best choice for all use-cases. Nobody anywhere is arguing for ML people to rewrite-it-in-rust. These are straw men of your own making.
> Also, fucking lmao, get over yourself, Rust isn't that hard to learn
More straw men! I literally never said this. Only that the community has made few if any attempts to promote it to complete novices, thus skewing the experience level of those who you do see promoting it (compared to popular languages that do promote themselves to novices).
I don’t think Rust is hard to learn, but I do think Rust’s ownership model is hard to truly appreciate if you haven’t spent at least some time in the trenches of languages with manually-managed memory.
> a lot of very experienced engineers encountering Rust, going "holy shit", and trying to preach about it from the rooftops
Preaching is like a religious thing. Why are people getting religious over a programming language?
People are obviously just making a living off of writing Rust and that's fine. I just find it so hilarious, dumbfounding and sad that people would stoop to such levels of dick-suckery over a programming language. Like, you all know it's going to replaced by Malbolge in 15 years, right?
I find this particularly compelling because Rust generally does not market itself towards novice developers. At least until very recently, I've seen Rust communities actively discourage novices from trying to learn Rust. Not that it's inherently a bad language to learn as one's first, but there just haven't been great resources for people to learn it if they don't already have some previous software experience. The net effect of this is that the enthusiasm you're seeing is coming from a much higher proportion than usual of people who've been in the industry awhile, and not from as many fresh college or bootcamp grads.