Let's not act like everyone who tries Rust gives up. OK? Sure it's definitely more difficult but people are learning and practicing and the pool is slowly expanding (me included, though I am not at production-grade experience yet).

> What you gain in reduced server costs is lost many times over in developer productivity.

Are you exaggerating for dramatic effect? I'd say depending on your people's seniority the productivity loss is anywhere from -50% to -500%, which is hardly "many times over".

You absolutely do iterate slower with Rust writing web backends -- no two ways about it. But you also (a) exaggerate the multiplier and (b) underestimate the long-tail of gained productivity that a language like Rust brings to the table (strong static typing et. al.)

And even if we take into account your comparison between server costs and programmer productivity -- there are areas where correctness and speed are more important than Joe and Susan being able to crank out 17 CRUD endpoints this week. I feel that this nuance is often ignored.

> Companies who chose Rails for decades knew it was slower and more memory-hungry than rolling everything yourself in Rust or C++.

I have worked with Rails for 6.5 years and they knew no such thing. They treated server costs exactly like they treated programmers -- a necessary evil, a cost center that (currently) cannot be optimized away.

I am consistently blown away by the protected and downright pampering environments that some HN people have lived in. It's pretty brutal out there though, and somebody has to point that out to you every now and then, lest you forget it (which it seems that you did).

> They did the math and the business case for Rails was more compelling.

They did no math, except one: how easy it is to hire 5 new devs in the next 1-2 months. No other analysis was involved whatsoever. Again, I've looked from within, a good number of times.

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I am all for an informed debate but that seems to be difficult with you as you resort to exaggerations and dramatic language.

For the record, I don't do my main work neither with Ruby on Rails nor with Rust (though I know both, or should I say I knew RoR because I haven't used it in a while now). I got no horse in the race, I am simply looking for an objective discussion based on merits that can hopefully ignore network effects and popularity. Technologies absolutely can and have won by utilizing network effects and popularity (see: Python) but that does not say much about their objective merits.

“But but but developer productivity” is a myth.

I do appreciate Rust a lot but nowadays find myself reaching for Golang more often. I simply don't have the extra time and energy to learn the final more advanced Rust pieces in my own leisure time so I'll learn it whenever I can but yeah, in the meantime: Golang to the rescue.