[bluejekyll]

While Rust is positioned firmly as an option in the same situations where C or C++ would be chosen, I'm personally of the opinion that it has a great potential of capturing use cases of higher-level languages as well, with the advent and work of Rust running on WebAssembly, it will become one of the first serious web client language alternatives to Javascript.

It's partly because of the memory safety features. There have been quite a few people I've noticed coming from languages like Ruby and Javascript and being successful. Whereas I think C and/or C++ might have been more challenging, again b/c of memory safety (GC's are a lovely thing to rely on, until they get in your way). The compiler offers a huge advantage here, because while it is true that it is much more restrictive than other languages, it also almost guarantees that your code is correct.

As an old C hack, with bad memories of C++, and a hater of the memory footprint of Java and the horribleness of the great GC pause; Rust has been a joy to learn and use. It's like bowling with the bumper rails up as an adult, and no one laughs at you (well, maybe they do, but you never throw a gutter ball!)