I have a confession to make. I started learning Clojure and Rust because of a not-so-worthy reason: because people told me to.

Wait isn't that following the herd? Is that ok?

I think that's OK (feel free to argue), and here is why. The majority of people developing in Clojure and Rust are senior developers. They have worked with numerous languages in the past, and they have made a conscientious decision to work with those niche languages. Doesn't that mean something - possibly that Rust and Clojure are exceptional?

Signal or noise?

Sure it could all be noise. After all, causal inference is incredibly hard.

There are other data points you can factor in. Developer surveys seem to suggest that those two languages are some of the most beloved.

And the mere fact that Clojure and Rust were created recently (2007, 2010 respectively) is reason to think that the language creators contextualized the programming landscape and address some of the prevailing faults. For example, Rust is marketed as a safe alternative to C++.

Newer is not better

But new things are built with the intention of vastly improving on the older things. And that counts.

Ultimately, I want to ask the crowd if they have considered a similar reason when deciding to learn a niche language.

PS: So as not to inadvertently offend anyone, I'll add these comments. I am not implying that:

• Other languages are less worthy.
• Correlation is causation. But it is a necessary condition (necessary but insufficient).

Warmly,
DH