A lot of scripting language folks I've talked to like Rust not because it lets them write extensions or whatever, but because static typing is awesome (and their use case works perfectly well with Rust as much as it does Python). In the static typing world, C++ has its own set of problems (namely, having to worry about pointers), and there's not much love for Java amongst some communities. Both Rust and Go provide an interesting new alternative here. Some extra static typing and free speed; sign me up!
I feel like for many of those people something like OCaml/Haskell/F#/Scala (which have been around for many years) would be better options. It's very rare to actually need the very last ounce of performance you get by moving to a non-GC language compared to a fast typed GCed language, whereas there is a real cost to having to manage object lifetimes in Rust.
> there is a real cost to having to manage object lifetimes in Rust.
I disagree. For the most part, you don't have to worry much about lifetimes in Rust once you have programmed in the language for a bit. It's a learning curve, like any other (functional languages have their own learning curve). There are cases now and then when you do have to think about it, but mostly it's either quickly fixing mistakes caught by the compiler (like any other type error, and this reduces as time goes by), or writing the correct code from the get-go.
That doesn't make Rust a better choice than the functional languages, but it certainly doesn't make it worse.
(of course, there are other reasons as to why Haskell/etc might be a better option for these people)
