Rust language usage is increasing, but developers who identify as former Rust users cited difficulty as their primary reason for staying away, according to the recently released 2022 State of Rust Survey.

More developers are using Rust than ever before, with more than 90% of the respondents to the annual survey identifying as Rust users, with 47% of those using Rust daily (an increase of 4% from 2021). The 2022 State of Rust Survey was conducted in December 2022, attracting 9,433 survey completions. The results were released August 7. This was the sixth year the survey had been conducted.

The December 2022 survey also found that 30% of Rust users can write simple programs in the language, 27% can write production-ready code, and 42% consider themselves productive using Rust. Among former Rust users—a minority of respondents—30% cited difficulty as the primary reason for giving up the language, while nearly 47% cited factors outside their control.

Other factors cited by the developers no longer using Rust were preference for another language, missing libraries, and Rust not helping to achieve their goals. Developers not identifying as Rust users cited difficulty, factors outside their control, and preference for another language as reasons for not using the language.

Other results from the 2022 State of Rust Survey:

• 29.7% stated they use Rust for the majority of coding work at their workplace, a 51.8% rise compared to the prior year.
• Reasons for using Rust included the perceived ability to write “bug-free software,” performance characteristics, and security and safety guarantees.
• The main worries for the future of Rust included concerns about the language becoming too complex (38%) and concerns that developers and maintainers behind Rust were not properly supported (26%). But 34% were not worried at all about the future of Rust.
• The top five countries represented in the survey were the United States (25%), Germany (12%), China (7%), the United Kingdom (6%), and France (5%).