what I like about Rust

Ambitious: the aim of being memory safe without the use of a garbage collector, allowing it to achieve C++ execution speeds.

Naming conventions:

• name_with_underscores for variable and function names
• HttpRequest instead of HTTPRequest for type names

Error reporting: compile errors are the best I've seen (though I've only really seen those of C and C++); they are even color-coded!

2 short keywords:

• fn for function declarations
• use, instead of using or import

I love that I don't need to add (the tedious) parenthesis around the condition expression in an if, while, and match statements:

if true {
    // always executes
}

The semicolon rule: I initially found it surprising that omitting a semicolon after a value is shorthand for returning. I appreciate it now... it's quite nifty, and I in fact now find return statements ugly.

Traits: they are an elegant way of providing abstract interfaces, and are therefore used in generic programming. As an example, a function can be made to accept different data types, so long as those types implement the given trait (or traits). Gorgeous!

The match statement is kool: exhaustiveness check, no fall-through, and nice syntax.

Allowing a trailing comma after a list of items, which is really great for copy-pasting and diffs.

Packaging conventions: by default, the build tool, Cargo, ensures that all build sources (which may include documentation) are placed in src/ in the root of a source distribution.

A fast-paced and time-based release cycle: a stable release will be made every 6 weeks, which is very ambitious for a programming language.

Development process:

• No one, including the Core Team, pushes anything to the Rust tree. Each person gets their changes reviewed first, and they mostly get approved by someone else.
• Merging the changes to the tree is nearly always done via a continuous integration system, which first ensures that each change passes all tests.

Allows masking of variables, even with different types:

let foo = 10;
let foo = "ten";

This is convenient.

The amount of iterations its design went through during its pre-1.0 development, which included numerous breaking changes, was... impressive. That's an indication that what resulted is a far better design than we could have had. The sheer amount of effort taken, which was such a unique experience for me, makes me feel grateful (I watched the activity for about a year before 1.0 was released). I am also grateful for the resilient users who kept up with the pain of the frequent changes, for they helped keep the language relevant and exciting, while also providing feedback.