If I need to do some systems level engineering, I’ll reach for Go or Rust. There is generally no reason to use Rust first, because 99% of us will not need 99 percentile performance. I also find Rust to be a tougher language. 98 percentile performance with Go is fine, where there are usually one or at most 3 ways to do something.
If I need web API services, I’ll use typescript for the ecosystem. Most providers offer SDKs and the broader ecosystem is rich. I can use node or bun, and these services can scale nicely at a reasonable $/maintenance/performance ratio.
I’ll reach for Docker because compute is now expensive and dedicated hosting is cheaper than AWS/GCP. I can get a 2020-2022 processor with 128gb RAM and generous bandwidth for $100-200 a month.