But I don't see why that precludes Rust from being a good choice in other applications, CLI in particular.
There is a gap between the nineties and now, and it is still void.
If you have to constrain it to CLI apps the average developer here on HN needs to write, I don´t see a reason to use such a complex beast as Rust. If you mean operating systems, I can see a spot for Rust. Also database systems or a web server implementation. But that is fairly niche.
For userland cli-apps I am not sure if the added complexity pays of in terms of sufficient performance gains in practice. If you want to write a new implementation of grep, sure. But how niche is that?
So in those cases where you need both type strictness (which I agree should be the default requirement) and cannot have an automatic garbage collector, I can see the value of Rust.
But for what audience is an automatic GC really a problem? Personally I would use Haskell, Java, F# for CLI-apps, but I know there are tons of other options there.
But also, I feel that it's generally incorrect to position Rust's safety model as the opposite of automatic GC. It kinda makes sense if you only focus on management of memory as a resource, but it ignores the whole race condition angle (which very much still exists in GC'd languages like Go or Java).
Agree, that is not what I meant. Rust provides type safety and allows you to without a GC, all while offering top speed. Being able to do without a GC is somewhat of a niche requirement I think. In those cases it is an requirement, Rust would be a top choice.
My point is: there are tons of GUI applications written in C++. And to this day there are still new projects that pick C++ because it needs a GUI. I consider that a bad thing for Rust. Thinking Rust should be at the CLI-apps competition is just a way to avoid C++. It is the wrong contest, and I am not sure if Rust is even able to win that contest because what Rust has to offer (no GC) isn´t of interest for most CLI apps. I think cli apps like kubectl would not be hurt by being GC'ed.
I think that the Rust leadership should identify that GUI is the first city they need to liberate from C++ if they ever dream to replace C++. I just learned some original work has started by various projects, so I keep my fingers crossed.
(Rust can also do in-line assembly…)
