Comment by 8s2ngy

Comment by 8s2ngy 3 months ago

I understand your perspective. I like to view niche languages as a medium for learning. For instance, I enjoy using Rust in my personal projects—even if many of these projects may never be released—because the lessons on immutability, functional programming constructs, and trait-oriented programming significantly enhance my day-to-day work. Therefore, I believe that learning niche languages, even in the absence of a robust job market, is worthwhile.

jen20 3 months ago

I'm not sure I'd call Rust a "niche language" any more (perhaps in ~2018) - it's in common use across many big technology companies.

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homebrewer 3 months ago

It is extremely niche outside of this bubble.

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- mmoskal 3 months ago
  
  According to Stack Overflow developer survey [0] Rust is at 12.5%, roughly a half of C# or Java and a quarter of Python. Also more than twice Ruby. So definitely not niche.
  [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular...
  
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  throwaway2037 3 months ago
  
  To be clear, that developer survey asked:
  > Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year?
  It does not ask if you are gainfully employed and using this language for your job.
  Also, in the same results, just above Rust, I see:
  > PowerShell 13.8%
  <sarcasm> So, I guess that we can safely say that Microsoft PowerShell is still more popular than Rust. </sarcasm>
  
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  winrid 3 months ago
  
  Powershell is probably more popular, it's used a lot for IT stuff so we never hear about it but it's there.
  
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  askonomm 3 months ago
  
  In my mind not niche means having jobs, and Rust has no jobs, not in any meaningful amount at least, and none at all in most countries. That puts it deep in the niche category for me.
  
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  DeathArrow 3 months ago
  
  It's popular in the "let's rewrite X in Rust" community which are very actively posting on HN, Reddit and wherever they can. That gives the impression it is not niche.
  But the moment you search Rust on LinkedIn, you can see the truth.
  
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  trott 3 months ago
  
  > According to Stack Overflow developer survey [0] Rust is at 12.5%, ... So definitely not niche.
  The annual survey is very popular in the Rust community. Its results are often used for advocacy. Participation by Rust developers is very high. So what you have is a classic case of a selection bias.
  
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- sterlind 3 months ago
  
  MS is starting to use Rust pretty extensively internally. That's a lot of developers outside the "bubble."
  
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- vlovich123 3 months ago
  
  F# will likely remain niche forever. It’s likely that Rust will not given its growing and accelerating adoption by Microsoft, Google and the Linux Kernel.
  It just takes time to defeat the 40+ years of c and c++ dominance.
  
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  DeathArrow 3 months ago
  
  I will take C, C++ or Zig over Rust any day. For some people, like me, the Rust way of doing things isn't a good fit. It's not a model I enjoy working with.
  I like F#, Haskell, Elixir but not Rust.
  
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  johnisgood 3 months ago
  
  Personally I will always prefer C's simplicity to Rust's complexity. Could be just me.
  
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DeathArrow 3 months ago

Just look at the job market. There are far more jobs for Go programmers and Go isn't particularly huge.
Compared with C/C++, Java, C#, Javascript, Python, Typescript, PHP, all the rest can be considered niche.

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