I think we can say Rust is beyond the “nobody uses” stage by now, and it’s much simpler and easier than C++. (And people who use it tend to like it, proving Bjarne wrong).
I'm sorry; you think people don't complain about Rust? There are tons of articles posted here from people complaining about Rust in various ways. Bjarne wasn't saying whether most people like it... that's orthogonal: I actually like C++, yet I have been complaining about it--at times quite bitterly--since before it was even standardized!
Indeed, I am a huge proponent of Rust and have been using it since before 1.0 (even contributed to it, in the past) -- and I complain about Rust a lot, too. Trying to restate Bjarne's point here: if I wasn't using Rust, then I wouldn't have any reason to complain about it.
Or, because there’s so many languages around now, they just use something else. I really don’t like working with Rust myself and so I use other languages.
C++ isn't "C with classes" and hasn't been for years. Yes, Rust is bigger and more complicated than C, but much less so than C++.
> Why are you being pedantic?
I'm not. I'm making a real point: Rust is much simpler and easier than C++, so the spirit of Bjarne's quote, which is that for a language to become popular it necessarily has to have as many drawbacks as C++, is wrong.