Now I feel reminded of this article I’ve read in the context of a forum discussion here. Let me re-quote from my previous interpretation & reaction:
I believe that part of the hype may be a more or less fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of Rust in some groups of people who are less deeply familiar with programming in the first place. Given that less focus on fine technical knowledge may occasionally go hand in hand with being able to make it into corporate leadership positions (probably also depending on the company of course… right?) it’s plausible I guess that reactions even such as
could be the consequence. Though it’s also noteworthy that it’s also plausible the reporting on such reactions can be a major part of the “issue” in the first place.
Fore example, regarding one other point that was mentioned in the OP here… like, for all I know[1] the topic of “Rust in the Linux kernel” isn’t too well described as merely an “ongoing battle” either.
If it was nothing but a destructive “battle”, why would the be doing it? The main thing I have perceived which will make it seem like a big “battle” would be many social media actors, who obviously love to dig up every last piece of drama that they can dig up and place on a big stage, for maximal audience engagement. – Or well maybe @ZiCog meant the more social-media site of things when mentioning “the battle going on about Rust in the Linux kernel”, not anything going on inside of the actual participants working on “Rust in the Linux kernel” development, and/or generally actively in the sphere of kernel development.
Either way; in reality, it seems it’s just a project/development/initiative[2] that managed to be promising enough to actually get kicked off for real, and that turned out valuable enough so people keep it alive and growing. [The most recent thing I’ve seen about it was thankfully a more normal piece of news that they upgraded it from no longer being considered an “experimental” thing.] And with those people involved, I’m certain that there, too, most people are definitely aware of lots of costs and trade-offs. And also, like @mroth already mentioned for the programing language in general, for Linux kernel matters in particular, certainly many people that work on the kernel would not be living along a strict split between “us” vs. “them” regarding “Rust users”, and “C users” idendity; because indeed one person can in fact be knowing and use both languages.
