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Comment by bbkane | Hacker News Reader

Really good references to "crossing the chasm" between early adopter needs and mainstream needs. In addition to the Ubuntu coreutils use case, I wonder what other chasms Rust is attempting to cross. I know Rust for Linux (though I think that's still relegated to drivers?) and automotive (not sure where that is).

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There are big pushes in pretty much every direction. The projects that really stand out to me are pyo3 (Replace c++ python modules with rust), Dioxus (react-like web framework), The ferrocine qualified compiler (automotive)

I think right now the ecosystem is pretty ripe and with DARPA TRACTOR there are only more and more reasons every day to put rust on your toolbelt.

I am secretly hoping that eventually we break free from the cycle of "hire a senior dev and he likes rust so the company switches" over to hey let's hire some good mid-level and junior rust developers

Are mid level and junior developers being hired anywhere for any reason right now? I don't mean specifically rust developers. I mean software developers.

Sure. There was an article a week or two ago about IBM aggressively hiring juniors. Of course the fact that is noteworthy probably means something in itself....

IBM is also not known for holding on to bodies -- IBM layoff stories abound.

a glut of junior hires now does not a pretty picture make in the long-term sense

Not really, I have been an avid rust programmer for 6 years, I don't think I have ever seen a good junior rust position

If you want to take a look at some of the "big drivers", the Project Goals[1] is the right place. These are goals proposed by the community and the language developers put together, they are not explicit milestones or must-haves, but they do serve as a guideline to what the project tries to put its time and effort on.

[1]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rust-project-goals/

> what other chasms Rust is attempting to cross

Rust is undoubtedly excellent. What tarnishes the picture is a small group of people that rewrite solid pieces of code into Rust, hijacking the original brand names (eg. "sudo") for the sole purpose of virtue signaling. And the later is why the come after the most stable pieces of software that warrant no rewrite at all, like coreutils.

It seems to me that the right approach would be to ignore those and still love Rust for what nice of a language it is.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu is all in on virtue signaling.

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