I'm just a modder and primarily use C, but started with BASIC and then C++; I am curious, without knowing anything other than the name and it's apparent growing popularity: What makes Rust so appealing? And if I was interested in trying to learn Python again, would it be better to just learn Rust instead?
It feels like the last language one will need to learn.
It has an improved C-style syntax (if statement is similar to if expression), it has algebraic type system (enums can contain nested data) and 99.9% of the time you can write in safe mode where you are guaranteed not to segfault.
Rust is the only language with the same low-level memory model of C/C++ (no garbage collector, focus on zero cost abstractions, etc) while also being memory-safe (like nearly all popular modern languages besides C/C++). Before Rust, you often had to choose between memory safety and performance.