In past 5 years Stackoverflow was running a comprehensive survey (here is latest for 2019), which, among other questions, asked for ‘most loved programming language’   – which basically means language developers used, like it and definitely want to continue with. Rust is doing very well in this category – it leads this category for past 4 years ( and this was one of reasons, why I started to play with Rust).  As this SO survey (with similar questions) is around for 5 years, it’s about time to put data in chart:

On x-axis you see year plus next best language to Rust (leader (2015 only) or second one), on y-axis you see %  of likes (from people who tried, those who liked it and want to continue using it). Secondary y-axis is for for “diff to next” series – which is absolute difference (in %) between Rust and next best language (visible   on x-axis). Rust is doing really great there (as a reference the is Go lang, which is often used as alternative to Rust.  C++ other natural alternative to Rust, did not make it to ‘loved languages’ for couple of years – so it’s not included in the chart – last couple of years it was about 52%).

According to the chart it looks like Rust is doing pretty well (just notice its +10% difference to next language in 2019, which is pretty impressive – below that  differences  are < 1%). But question arises, much much this picture  is ‘objective’ and how much it’s caused by a ‘hype’ around the language? I think survey can be somehow influenced by community hype – look for instance at 2017, when Smalltalk was second most loved language, but next year it sank into complete oblivion.

Probably there can be some bias, but 4 years in lead in surely impressive, and having used Rust myself I think it’s based on very solid grounds (language itself plus  the community, which it really great). So well done Rust.