[pron]

As, despite our efforts, we haven't been able to find big differences between different languages (considering reasonable choices for the appropriate domain) in any important bottom-line metrics, neither in research nor in industry, I don't think there's much point in even mentioning objective value. The only scientifically acceptable working assumption at this point is that language choice (with the caveat above) makes no significant objective difference. It's like saying, even if rum-raisin ice cream gives us the ability to see through walls I still prefer pizza; we have no reason to believe rum-raisin ice cream does that, so why even mention it? As far as we know, it's all about personal preference -- we have no reason whatsoever to believe that either Rust or Zig are objectively better or worse than the other -- as well as some easily observable secondary objective differences such as popularity.

[nickpsecurity]

From Derek Jones' references, I got this study that's about the best I've seen so far showing there is a difference:

http://archive.adaic.com/intro/ada-vs-c/cada_art.pdf

I'll also add that Rust can give you both memory safety and race freedom at compile time. If you debugged heisenbugs, then you know that's a huge benefit. On Lobsters, one guy mentioned being hired for (a year?) to find and fix one in a system. Eiffel's SCOOP had a similar benefit. Languages such as Chapel made parallelism super easy in many forms vs C++ and MPI. Used judiciously, macros can eliminate tons of boilerplate. Erlang's strategy for error handling might go in this list if reliability is a goal.

There's been quite a few examples were a difference choice in language design eliminates entire classes of problems with anything from no effort to significant effort by developer. Increased velocity with fewer bugs during feature integrations and maintenance are provably-beneficial metrics for a business. I think we can say there's scientific evidence of actual benefits from language choices which have potential benefits if used in business. I just can't tell how far, if any, you'll get ahead by using them since there's non-language-design factors to consider that might dominate.

[thesuperbigfrog]

There is a reason why Ada continues to be used in safety critical systems--it works. More bugs are prevented and problems are detected earlier than they would be in a more lax language such as C or C++.

The large uptake and excitement around Rust shows that there are many C and C++ programmers who appreciate the safety guarantees that it provides. The popularity of Rust has actually created a resurgence of interest in Ada and each language has benefitted from the other.

For example, Spark, a well-defined subset of the Ada language intended for formal verification of mission-critical software, is adopting safe pointers that were inspired by Rust (source: https://blog.adacore.com/using-pointers-in-spark).

I would not be surprised if Rust also adds features based on ideas from Ada.

This is good. The "fast and loose" qualities of C and C++ allow far too many errors and security vulnerabilities in software. We have better tools. We just need to use them.