The author refers to a few things that he thinks will appeal to the "early majority," but I feel like that's a weakness of the article. Is the author part of the "early majority?" (doesn't seem like it). Does he have the same problems that they have? How does he know?

He is the Rust project lead, and the Rust project has been doing quite a bit of user, adopter, and non-adopter interviews over the past few years.