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"${LANGUAGE} programmers" aren't really a thing. Our important skills translate fairly cleanly between ecosystems.

Ok fine, then to quote the parent to whom I was responding, “Rust advocates.”

I am willing to bet that most of those “Rust advocates” are programmers who code in Rust but I’m fine with not calling them that. I agree that good programmers should be able to work in different languages, operating systems, countries.

My point is that even in a world where the government mandates that certain applications that would otherwise be written in C++ are instead written in Rust or Swift we wouldn't see some massive loss of work for people who currently program in C++.

Ok, that’s a fair point. Imagine you’re Bjarne Stroustrup, sure he doesn’t consider himself a c++ programmer, and he isn’t worried about his employment prospects, but he still has a vested interest in this issue.

We may see that the 'next generation' of 'better' programming languages (the next Swift, the next Rust, etc.) cannot easily/readily/practically become certified for government use, though, leading to less innovation long term.

For example, if this had already happened we may find today that Java is certified for use but that Rust is simply not allowed, while maybe Swift is because of Apple's backing of it.

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