The way I have seen it explained before: Rust is not the perfect applications language, but there actually aren't any good mainstream applications languages out there, so Rust is perhaps the best we've got.
What I want:
* Powerful, strict typesystem (typeclasses, sum types, type-inference, closures)
* Constrained mutation, no 'spooky action at a distance'
* Safe multithreading
* Fast
* Memory-safe
* Native binaries
* Large, deep ecosystem
* Great tooling
* Jobs