No I was half-listening and think it was mentioned in a loose way, and I think I'm conflating it with some other mention in a different recent podcast so that's more than a few levels of looseness.
I've just scrubbed back through - the podcast was https://syntax.fm/show/571/supper-club-rust-in-action-with-t..., which follows the pleasing practise of providing chapters (yay). It was Tim McNamara speaking from about 12'40": what he actually said was that about half of Rust learners who do drop out fall away because of the purported difficulty of the language. Very different from my faux summary so apologies for the grievous misrepresentation.
I still find Rust as hard to use as others I've spoken to do though. I'm kind of keeping at it for reasons specific to projects I have in mind, as well as a certain dense stubbornness.
Thank you! It’s all good, I just hadn’t heard that before and was curious how it was figured out! The Rust Project has long acknowledged that Rust is tough to learn. That’s why I got to have a job back then! And there’s still new good work going on in that space. I don’t think the nut has been fully cracked yet.
> there’s still new good work going on in that space
Is there anything there someone like me (ie. having difficulty with Rust) might usefully contribute to? I'm a little overwhelmed right now trying to keep a roof over my head, but am compiling a list of things I might like to help with when the current storm has passed.
I don't know what's good to help with and what isn't, because I haven't been involved with Rust development for a pretty long time at this point.
Personally I think contributions work best when you're trying to solve a pain that you personally have or at least have some sort of connection to, so I'd encourage you to consider what/how/why you struggled to learn, and then try to fix that. I know it's vague, but it's the best I've got right now!
Hey Steve, I was referring to the official Rust Survey in the podcast interview. I'll track down a specific link, but the stat comes from one of the PDFs rather than the analysis blog posts. I'm having difficulty finding it currently.
