Which is exactly the direction I see going forward, finally getting mainstream mindshare closer to how Xerox PARC languages were bootstraped, languages like Zig come about 30 years too late.

Rust is already shipping in production for Windows, Android, Amazon and Azure infrastructure, and the Azure official language for new low level systems code, hardly questionable its adoption in the industry at scale.

Naturally someone might prove me wrong by releasing that one framework or product that makes writing Zig code unavoidable.

▲

pron 2 days ago | parent [-]

> hardly questionable its adoption in the industry at scale.

Really? It's heavily marketed, yet after 10+ years it's struggling to achieve even a 2% market penetration. I mean, I don't think anyone sees it as the next Fortran, C, C++, Java, Python, JS, TS, C#, Ruby, or PHP, but even Go's adoption is much higher. The numbers still look more "let's give it a shot" than "this is the future", and at its rather advanced age, that looks questionable to me. Successful technological products, even programming languages, are usually adopted much more quickly.

> Naturally someone might prove me wrong by releasing that one framework or product that makes writing Zig code unavoidable.

I have no idea if Zig will ever become successful. I mean, if Rust is struggling so badly despite the head start and hype, I don't think the chances are great. It's just that as someone who still does quite a bit of low-level programming every now and again, I find Zig a truly innovative and interesting language. I wouldn't bet on it, or on Rust for that matter, from a pure, disinterested, market numbers or historical trends point of view.

▲

surajrmal a day ago | parent | next [-]

I've seen rust enter every major c++ codebase I've worked on in the last few years. The major thing slowing adoption is the lack of good interop with c++, and general dirth of greenfield projects that can afford to ignore existing c++ ecosystem of internal libraries. Hiring for rust skills is also a challenge. But still adoption presses on. I see a hockey stick curve still approaching.

▲

pjmlp 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes really, I gave you the examples from industry giants.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google have no reason to drop Rust and replace ongoing efforts with Zig.

Nor Apple is going to drop Swift for Zig.

Vercel tooling is powered by Rust, as yet another example. Which is quite relevant given how many SaaS products only support Next.js on their SDKs.

Anyone using a recent Volvo car is also running Rust code on some canbus units, by the way.

	▲	pron 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know what you're saying about Zig. I have no predictions about that language's success, I just think its design is very interesting. Those examples of Rust use by industry giants are a red flag for its adoption, because they look nothing like adoption by those very same companies of languages that ended up popular. Obviously, non-zero usage is something, but the rate and extent of adoption for what is now a fairly old language is exceptionally low compared to languages that ended up making it. Such an unusually low adoption rate means that it will take another two decades for Rust to pick up even 50% of the low-level space (assuming some positive second derivative). It could be less if the rate suddenly picks up, but it could also be never if other competition enters the game in all that time. Nobody needs to drop Rust for competitors to have a chance because only a small minority is picking up Rust in the first place. On paper, Rust seemed to have better chances than Go in its market segment, but it's doing worse. Rust is now at the age Java was when JDK 6 came out, and it has maybe 1-2% of the market and 5-10% of the low-level segment. That is not where Rust's believers expected or hoped it would be at this age. Could it somehow succeed in a way that's different from all successful languages before it? That's certainly a possibility, but I don't see any indication for why anyone should bet on that unusual thing happening.