Rust is certainly not ready yet, but I think you’ll be surprised how great Rust can end up; I believe it will end up superior to the options available, though its systems focus will certainly have certain cognitive burdens; it is not going to be superior in every way.
People typically associate web servers with dynamic languages. I am ready to challenge that notion; there are various things that people don’t think of that a language like Rust makes possible, and those sorts of things are the focus of my talk at Strange Loop this year, in September: https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/fast-secure-safe-the-web...
Your Strange Loop talk description presents some good reasons for using statically typed languages, but why Rust specifically? Why not the JVM, using Scala or even Java 8? Sure, a Rust program compiled to native code can start faster, and be fast right away without any JIT warm-up. But is it worthwhile to optimize for those things? Especially since the JVM already has a much larger set of libraries and tools. And while Rust's lack of GC would probably yield impressively low memory usage figures, I wonder if that matters in server applications.
The idea of a server that starts up fast, is fast from the start, and has minimal memory usage is appealing to me, but I suspect that it's irrational to optimize for these things except in niche applications like web interfaces in routers.
I’ll be covering more about why Rust specifically in the talk; there are some really nifty things in its compiler and type system which allow for more than languages like Scala and Java 8. I’ve mentioned some of them in some of the other comments here; given the interest shown here, I think I’ll say more about what I hope for in the long term in a few weeks’ time. Oh, It also gives you a lot in the way of correctness which languages like Scala and Java 8 don’t give you.
I looked at your other comments but couldn't see anything enlightening. I really enjoy Scala's type system and would love an excuse to learn Rust; what can Rust's type system do that Scala's can't? (I saw you mention an ORM; what additional safety could Slick gain if it were using Rust's type system?)
People typically associate web servers with dynamic languages. I am ready to challenge that notion; there are various things that people don’t think of that a language like Rust makes possible, and those sorts of things are the focus of my talk at Strange Loop this year, in September: https://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/fast-secure-safe-the-web...