[dmpk2k]

There are a number of languages with support for generics. If easier generics was Rust's claim to fame, it would have quietly disappeared into LtU-land, never to be seen again.

Luckily, there's a lot more to Rust than that. Killer feature generics aren't.

[rohshall]

Why do you think easier generics is not that important? I find that complexity of a statically compiled language increases manifold because of the way they handle generics. Do you think complexity does not increase or do you think complexity is not a criterion for success of a language?

[pjmlp]

I have experienced some form of generics in Modula-3, Ada, Eiffel, C++, C#, D, Java, Scala, OCaml, F#, Haskell.

Given my CS background, the only language I think does a poor job with generics is Java.

As for language's success, it is usually related to which company is pushing it, or which killer feature/framework makes the people want to learn it.

I am not aware of any language that went mainstream just because it was simpler than existing ones, without having one of the reasons listed above tied to it.

[dmpk2k]

Not killer feature ≠ not important.