Nice article. It has a lot of interesting data. In a few places you add some references, but in most places they are missing. Citing your sources might increase the article’s credibility.
Also check this thread about the TIOBE index.
Finally, if I’m not wrong, the main premise of your article’s prediction is:
Current trends for Rust to overtake C and C++
If the user base of both C and C++ continues at the same level, while Rust continues to acquire 1.9% of developers per year, we can project based on the StackOverflow data that Rust will overtake C in the next 3.6 years and C++ in the next 4.5 years. If using the JetBrains data, where Rust is acquiring 1.2% of developers per year, we can project that it will take 5.1 years for Rust to overtake C and 11.1 years to overtake C++. However, there are good reasons to question whether C and C++ will maintain the same share of developers in the future.
My main constructive feedback is:
properly define what you mean by “overtake”. I guess you mean the absolute number of people who write Rust code, compared to the other languages. If so, I don’t think that is a very interesting metric. C/C++ is the dominant language in embedded systems (industry support for Rust is meager), C++ in game development and other domains, for example. I don’t see Rust “overtaking” (in the sense of being the language where most code is written) those languages in those domains in the next decade. Rust is popular in the cryptocurrency industry. What I’m trying to say is that there is a lot of nuance in such a statement.
In any case, thanks for the article, very interesting.