It's interesting and does a lot of neat stuff. However, there's too much runtime and library to squish into something C-like, and the inevitable hop to/from C/++ there'll be impedance at that boundary. C doesn't manage memory the same way, a lot of stuff is kinda C++ + + non-C++ly templates + (Java-like interfaces * templates) + functional diddling + recursive types + structural matching, all difficult to represent in purer C.

I see Rust as a higher-level systems language, useful in different ways from (lower-level) C; not so high-level that there's an eval and everything's sprayed around the stack(s) and garbage-collected heap(s), and not so low-level you have to obsess about placement. Rust would be good for things >1 layer away from the top and bottom of the stack (or rather, the outer areas of a dependency graph).

I agree with others wrt Rust's primary "competitor" being C++, with some possible lunch-eating of D, non-browser Javascript, Erlang and its kin, and to some extent Java and its kin (esp. Kotlin, Scala), probably C# same as Java, probably F# but I'm less familiar.

I see it as being useful as glue between systems-level and scripts, especially if Python would be used otherwise. It would be useful as a partial basis for secure components. If serialization and resource management can be set up properly it'd be useful for dynamic relocation of things heterogeneous and at various distances and levels of trust; in other words, super-, high-performance, and distributed computing. Probably also graphics and games.

I do have some concern about the amount of ownership-twiddling Rust requires. I understand why it's there and useful, but some sort of def-use graph between basi