Every new programming language needs to build from its core supporters to reach developers and organizations and ensure a bright future. It seems that Rust, a language created at Mozilla, has managed to do that since it reached version 1.0 in 2015.
The Rust project's developer survey from the first quarter of 2020[1] attracted less than 4,000 developers, many of whom didn't use it regularly. The project's September 2020 survey[2] drew a record 8,323 responses and 83% of them said they actually used Rust.
With the weight of engineers at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) behind Rust, it's turned a corner from being Stack Overflow's "most loved" language that was used by few to one of the top programming languages.
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From the outset, Mozilla wrote its experimental Servo rendering engine in Rust, but now Microsoft has started exploring[4] it to eliminate memory bugs in C/C++ Windows and Office code, and now AWS treats the language as a critical component to its long-term strategy for developer tools, infrastructure, interoperability and more[5]. For AWS, Rust is now up there with C++ and Java. In June, Rust popped up in programming language popularity index Tiobe's top 20 list[6].
Rust has faced obstacles because of the learning curve required, and a shortage of software libraries, while organizations have been in invested in other languages. These days Rust is winning over developers through its engagement with contributors[7] and commitment to improve things like the Rust compiler, packages, and crates[8].
Rust is also being used more frequently now on reasonably sized projects. Last year, 34% reported using it