June 17 is a rather arbitrary date to write this report, but the Rust user groups page was updated exactly 3 months ago. As I updated the numbers there I wanted to submit it to This week in Rust, but, rather understandably, they don't like to include the same URL twice. They even have a CI job failing if the same URL is submitted twice.
So I figured instead of submitting that page I could update some of the other data pages I collected and I could write a report about all the changes. That will be probably more interesting and it will also have a different URL. Then if I remember to update it later, I could repeat and maybe expand this report a few months from now.
So this is the report.
Rust User Groups
There are mostly Meetup groups in the list, though some use different platforms. In some cases the number of members cannot be determined.
Overall:
| date | no. groups | members | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023.12.11 | 99 | 59,629 | |
| 2024.03.17 | 113 | 65,200 | 5,571 |
| 2024.06.17 | 116 | 68,126 | 2,926 |
This is 4.4% growth in 3 month or roughly 20% annually. I think that is a very impressive growth. Using the git commits one could check the changes in the specific groups, but it seems that groups that organize events get many new members while others that don't organize event may also lose a few.
The two largest Rust groups are the Rust London User Group (3,223) and Rust NYC (3,041). These are also the only groups with more than 3,000 members.
The 3rd largest group would be the Code-Mavens group with 2,949 member that I use to organize virtual events. However, it is not a purely Rust group so I did not include it in the list.
The smallest group is Rust in Israel (18 members) that I created on this Sunday. It will grow.
For full details, see of Rust User Groups.
Rust on LinkedIn
| group | 2024.04.08 | 2024.06.17 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rust Programming Language | 23,261 | 24,139 | 3.7 % |
| Rust Developer Community (Rust Lang) | 3,668 | 4,048 | 10.3 % |
| Rust Developers | 1,311 | 1,365 | 4.1 % |
| Rust (Programming Language) | 1,308 | 1,489 | 13.8 % |
Rust on Facebook
| Group | 2024.04.08 | 2024.07.19 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rust Developers (inactive) | 8.8K | 9.0K | 2.27% |
| Rust Programming Language | 3.0K | 3.4K | 13% |
| Rust-lang.tw | 2.5K | 2.6K | 4% |
| Programming Rust | 1.9K | 2.0K | 5% |
| Rust Developers Vietnam | 1.8K | 2.2K | 22% |
The first group listed is inactive, but still people become members.
Full report on Rust on Facebook
Rust on Reddit
Subredit members
| subredit | 2024.04.08 | 2024.06.19 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| /r/rust | 286K | 297K | +3.8% |
| /r/learnrust | 25K | 27K | +8% |
| /r/rust_gamedev | 38K | 38K |
The 3.8% increase in 2 months is roughly 25% annually. Very nice.
The 8% increase in 2 months is, what, 55% a year? I did not compute it, but also there might be some extreme rounding error as we only have the numbers in thousands so the real change is somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 members.
The scary part is that on the Gamedev both the number of subscribers as the number of people currently online were the same as 2 months ago.
See Rust on Reddit
X Twitter
Followers
| account | 2024.01.06 | 2024.06.19 |
|---|---|---|
| Rustlang | 136.9K | 143.9K |
| Mara Bos | 41.3K | 43.3K |
| rust_foundation | 35.6K | 37.7K |
| RustTrending | 29.5K | 32.4K |
| ThisWeekInRust | 31.9K | 32.3K |
| RustConf | 15.3K | 16.4K |
| rust_analyzer | 13.5K | 13.5K |
| rustembedded | 11.2K | 11.9K |
| tokio_rs | 11.6K | 11.8K |
| SurrealDB | 7,498 | 8,345 |
| RustFest | 7,825 | 7,742 |
| rustjobs_dev | 4,499 | 5,568 |
| crates.io status | 5.039 | 5,543 |
| RustSecurity | 3,964 | 4,611 |
| rustlab_conf | 3,816 | 4,163 |
| AstraKernel | 1,925 | 3,611 |
| Orhun Parmaksız | 3,336 | |
| RustDiscussions | 2,549 | 3,285 |
| RustNationUK | 2,157 | 2,738 |
| RustLondon_ | 2,522 | 2,699 |
| euro_rust | 2,201 | 2,503 |
| letsgetrusty | 1,418 | 2,387 |
| rustoftheday | 482 | 1,513 |
| ratatui_rs | 79 | 839 |
| RustMaven | 1 | 48 |
Orhun Parmaksız is the maintainer of Ratatui.rs
2023.12.07
| account | posts | followers | following |
|---|---|---|---|
| rust_programming_language | 12 | 2,374 | 16 |
| rustlanguage | 7 | 1,223 | 0 |
| rustacean.dev | 14 | 576 | 9 |
| rust_language_ | 19 | 283 | 434 |
| rust_lang_ | 1 | 75 | 6 |
| Rust Maven on Instagram | 0 | 3 | 0 |
2024.06.19
| account | posts | followers | following |
|---|---|---|---|
| rust_programming_language | 21 | 2,709 | 5 |
| rustlanguage | 7 | 1,245 | 1 |
| rustacean.dev | 14 | 624 | 9 |
| rust_language_ | 19 | 330 | 434 |
| rust_lang_ | 1 | 93 | 6 |
| Rust Maven on Instagram | 34 | 64 | 6 |
Rust on Telegram
There might be other groups, but I am not aware of them and I've just created the Rust Maven telegram group so let me put it here:
Number of members.
| group | 2024.06.19 |
|---|---|
| Rust Maven | 0 |
And you are invited to join!
If you know of other groups, let me know so I can list them here.
Are there any Rust groups on WhatsApp that you would like me to include in my report?
The popularity of Rust
The Stack Overflow survey 2023 indicates that Rust is the most admired language by a large gap at 84.66% (the next is Elixir at 73.13%). That is a lot of people love Rust. On the other hand it is only 6th most desired language with 30.56%. Ahead of it are SQL and HTML/CSS that are, well, different. Also TypeScript, Python, and JavaScript. As I understand this indicates how many job openings are.
In a nutshell, this seem to indicate that many people will want to use Rust, but the number of open positions are relatively low.
However, being on the 6th place is also extremely good.
PYPL - PopularitY of Programming Language
Indicates that Rust is number 10 with 2.5% share and +0.4% 1-year trend.
Python is number 1 with 29.06% share and 1.4% 1-year trend.
C/C++ (bundled together) is number 5 with 6.4% with -0.0% 1-year trend. (emphasize of being negative 0 :-).
Rust is number 17 (up from number 20 a year ago) with 1.17% ratings and +0.26% change.
Python is number 1 with 15.39% ratings and +2.93% change.
C++ is number 2 with 10.03% ratings and -1.33% change.
C is number 3 with 9.23% ratings and -3.14 change.
In their description they seem to indicated that in the last month C++ overtook C for the first time, but if I understand correctly the "change" field, we should say that C fell more than C++.
