Rust's popularity despite the challenges of navigating the borrow checker has me rethinking what turns people away from Haskell. Specifically, the types are often blamed, but I don't think that's a major factor.
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As somebody who likes Haskell but uses Rust mainly, I put backwards compatibility (of the language and base), the way library versioning is handled (multiple versions of a dependency don't break the build), as some big reasons I avoid using it.
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I think Rust has done a great job with documentation and error reporting too, which are also really important when beginners are starting out. And the way that experimental language features can only be used on nightly, requiring stabilization for general use.
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The rust book is a triumph! I'm cautiously enthusiastic about the nightly system. It's great that it lets extensions fade away without hitting stable, but it can go wrong if, over time, too many things depend on nightly features.
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That was definitely an issue early on (several years ago), but I think that's died down now that most things that people need are on stable. It's very rare that you run into a lib requiring nightly now, thankfully!
Real world usage is a driver for stabilization, which explains why things have gotten much quieter in this front over time.
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