[gadmm]

We taught Rust at Masters-level as part of a course meant to show engineering students a variety of concepts from innovative programming language (there was also Haskell and Scala). Learning Rust is a must (at least for our kind of students), but not because "everything is being rewritten in Rust".

First, I think knowing concepts from various languages makes better programmers. But Rust in particular is part of a family of languages along with C++ that are very powerful and versatile, but that require a strong discipline in order to write correct programs. And while C++ is more widespread currently, learning Rust teaches you this discipline, simply because the compiler will keep rejecting your programs until you understand it. C++ compilers on the other hand happily accept nonsensical programs, and it is hard to find modern C++ experts to teach this skill (and sometimes it is even hard to get experts agree on what the discipline is!). Yet in some areas where C++ has few alternatives, unreliable software can have huge consequences. So learning Rust is important because it will also make of you a better C++ programmer.