To give a somewhat different reason than what I'm seeing, I don't care too much about the 'memory safety plus speed' thing. I'm often building services that would be "fast enough" in Java. Is it nice to be faster? Yes, definitely, and that's part of why I write Rust, but not the whole story by any means.
I like rust for a few reasons.
* I really like Rust developers - I've met many, talked with many, and we get along and they've helped me through many technical problems, both big and small.
* I found rust extremely easy to get started with. I knew I'd have to learn the language, I did not also want to learn build tooling, package management, etc. These barriers exist in many other languages, it's frustrating because I just want to focus on programming. Cargo is excellent and I am a huge fan of how rust manages crates.
* I find it very easy to express what I want in rust, to reason about the code, etc. I know when a function might error, I know when I need to handle some unforseen case, I can express how a variable is used, when it is usable, whether it can be mutated. I can cut down on boilerplate with generics and macros.
The last point is what keeps me coming back. I find rust extremely easy to write, because it makes the things I care about easy to express.
I like rust for a few reasons.
* I really like Rust developers - I've met many, talked with many, and we get along and they've helped me through many technical problems, both big and small.
* I found rust extremely easy to get started with. I knew I'd have to learn the language, I did not also want to learn build tooling, package management, etc. These barriers exist in many other languages, it's frustrating because I just want to focus on programming. Cargo is excellent and I am a huge fan of how rust manages crates.
* I find it very easy to express what I want in rust, to reason about the code, etc. I know when a function might error, I know when I need to handle some unforseen case, I can express how a variable is used, when it is usable, whether it can be mutated. I can cut down on boilerplate with generics and macros.
The last point is what keeps me coming back. I find rust extremely easy to write, because it makes the things I care about easy to express.