Rust is not a C++ replacement, nor a C replacement. It targets its own niche (embedded, realtime, correctness-oriented). It's a totally different development culture. Zig, OTOH, is absolutely a C replacement.
My day job is maintaining the toolchains for a popular safety-certified realtime embedded operating system. I have never once been asked to provide a Rust toolchain. Fortran, yes. Ada, yes. Python and Go, yes. By and large it's just C (and more and more C++).
Rust seems to be mostly something "full stack developers" and "back end developers" embrace for server-side toys and hobby projects.
Python, on a realtime embedded operating system? Rust isn't really there for embedded development yet. It's great for low-level code on full-blown processors/OSs though
Top-end embedded processors have GPUs and hypervisors these days and run AI algorithms to, say, detect lane changes and do parallel-parking maneuvers. These days AI means code written in Python and Fortran.
Rust does not target correctness-oriented code at all. Neither do standard C or C++, for that matter, but there are derivatives of C that can (and are) used for it.
> It targets its own niche (embedded, realtime, correctness-oriented).
I don't know of anyone who actually uses Rust in that niche.
Everyone who uses Rust is using it because of "C++ is hard, let's go shopping instead" syndrome.
I.e., at this point it's a language for beginners to ease themselves into programming without training wheels and eventually graduate to real big boy programming languages.
It's pretty much irrelevant what people feel emotionally about Rust.
The real-world fact is that Rust is, as of March 2020 at least, an entry-level systems programming language. It's used as a stepping stone by former PHP/Python/Go programmers, who are very intimidated by C++, to get into performance-oriented coding.
Nobody actually writing embedded or sensitive code (airplanes, nuclear power stations, etc.) is doing it in Rust.
The language is young and you don't certify a software solution every two days or don't rewrite your nuclear power station code every day.
Very experienced programmers switched to Rust because it makes it possible to build large scale industrial programs both efficient and reliable. They won't switch to C++ just because they think they're good enough to live dangerously.
(btw I work on plant control and yes I write parts in Rust)
It's true that a lot of PHP/Python/Go programmers look to Rust rather than C++ when getting into performance-oriented code. But it's not really a stepping stone, because you never have to leave.
It's true that not a lot of people are using Rust for embedded software. That's a much harder nut to crack because so many of the toolchains are proprietary (and embedded support in Rust is still missing quite a few things).
Also: I've used Rust at work. In fact, I learnt Rust because I was processing a lot of data at work, and needed a fast language to do so in a reasonable amount of time.
