Fear of unfamiliar syntax. This is utterly bogus, but I can bet you that if rust used python style layout and haskell style type signatures, it would still be incredibly niche. Something can wipe the floor with the competition, be rock solid, stable and blazingly fast, but if it’s unfamiliar it will be niche. See elm for front end, for example.
But the weird thing to me is that Rust’s syntax is also pretty familiar unfamiliar since it is (just to start) heavily inspired by ML. Does it really just come down to the fact that it has mandatory curly braces and semicolons? It just seems weird to me that this should be the sticking point for people.
Edit: Oops, wrote “familiar” when I meant “unfamiliar”.
That’s a fair point. I have learned so many programming languages and continue to enjoy learning about weird ones that these relatively minor syntax design decisions do not seem like they should be dealbreakers to me, but that likewise means that I am also not the one that they have to worry about appeasing when designing the syntax to attempt to maximize adoption.
But the weird thing to me is that Rust’s syntax is also pretty
familiarunfamiliar since it is (just to start) heavily inspired by ML. Does it really just come down to the fact that it has mandatory curly braces and semicolons? It just seems weird to me that this should be the sticking point for people.Edit: Oops, wrote “familiar” when I meant “unfamiliar”.
It’s certainly a sticking point. People complain about Rust syntax all the time.
Personally, I think its syntax is about as close to C++ syntax as it can be without inheriting some truly horrendous decisions.
That’s a fair point. I have learned so many programming languages and continue to enjoy learning about weird ones that these relatively minor syntax design decisions do not seem like they should be dealbreakers to me, but that likewise means that I am also not the one that they have to worry about appeasing when designing the syntax to attempt to maximize adoption.