The real question is what tradeoffs you are making and what you are gaining. Rust makes certain memory safety guarantees about the program at compile time, but at the same time it disallows perfectly safe constructions, which can exist in C++, as well.
The reason I personally chose Rust as my go to language for low level programming is that despite learning systems programming in college I pretty much never used it outside of school. Meaning I didn't have any of that knowledge that c and c++ programmers had built up over years of experience. So I decided that instead of having to deal with the unknown skill deficiencies in writing concurrent software and memory management I'd rather just have a compiler scream at me. I don't regret the decision.
Also, I remember writing an async TCP implementation in college with c++ using boost. Rust tooling is just so far ahead of that.
I see this differently: DARPA bets on different baskets in parallel. This is just one basket, if they are wrong it doesn't matter because there are other bets to reduce the general risk.
I don't see anyone defending JavaScript. In fact a whole lot of people are using typescript now because JavaScript is just so bad.
As for python, that's a good point. I guess it's just because it's easy to use and all the numerical stuff is done with c-bindings anyway?
But the C++ Situation is genuinely different. There's a reason governments are now calling upon developers to just let it die already[0]. That design flaw is so bad it's causing genuine harm.
[0] https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/urgent-need-memory-saf...
No, it's horrible, because now you have both python types and numpy types, which don't really interact well with one another. If you are using a language made for numerical analysis (e.g. Julia), a lot of headaches disappear instantly.
Python is 100% just a case of a language being used because it is being used. It has, by itself, few merits to many of the tasks it is actually being for.
>design flaw
It is a tradeoff though. Rust is paying that tradeoff by being very restrictive about certain patterns and being in general quite complex to learn.