Rust, C++, and Python trends in jobs on Hacker News (February 2025)
44 comments
·February 20, 2025fdsf111
mountaineer
Yeah, I found the percentage of job posts with the keyword in https://www.hntrends.com when I was publishing it, was effective.
math_dandy
Number of job posts itself seems like a better measure of the state of the job market than mentions or mention-density. What aspects might mentions capture that number of postings wouldn’t?
internet101010
It would capture the shift in need for each language.
feverzsj
It's just Hacker News attracts more rust users, so more rust jobs here. You can search on actual job sites. Rust jobs are still rare.
pjmlp
Definitely, doing this on a game development board, or data engineering would give completely different numbers.
weinzierl
LinkedIn doesn't even recognize Rust as a language you can select.
You can select Perl, Fortran and Cobol, but Rust? Crickets.
I asked them half a year ago if they would add it. I included a few sources, e.g. the StackOvflow survey and a couple of sources that showed LinkedIn's parent Microsoft's investment in Rust, but I only got stock answers.
So, Rust has some way to go.
koakuma-chan
I doubt you can "ask" a company like LinkedIn. Your best chance is probably their Twitter account manager responding to your tweet.
tayo42
This is what I've noticed in the real world working. I haven't seen much enthusiasm for it. I actuslly introduced it for a new experimental project and got a bunch of push back on it.
millerm
I’ve been a developer since the 90s. Mainly on the JVM, some Objective-C, and too much JavaScript garbage. I would gladly take a junior position, making junior pay if I could get an entry-level Rust gig. I know that’s not going to happen, but I sure would like it too.
roland35
Too many rust jobs are in crypto or web3 stuff right now. Even if you like that tech, it's pretty undeniable that those industries are boom/bust and quite risky.
koakuma-chan
I had an opportunity to get an entry-level Rust job, but I rejected it because it paid only $500/mo. Now I regret it.
bookofjoe
That's not even close to minimum wage!
noname120
Depends in which country.
koakuma-chan
Yeah that's why I rejected it. I'm a Ukranian national and that was a remote job at a Ukranian company, and I had to reject it because I live in Canada. But now I think maybe it could have been worth it to accept it and just move to like Poland or something, but you never know.
convolvatron
There are fewer rust jobs, but those that are there are reallly pretty desperate. Most have stopped agreeing to train people because of the time involved, and the risk someone won’t really take to it. Learn rust in your own to a basic fluency and you’ll be able to find a job
Terretta
Are posts not mentioning any languages? Are posts dwindling, which means Rust is actually going through the roof? Is some other language the one with rising demand?
Needs some kind of baseline ...
jeremyjh
Yes, since everything is declining, I'm left assuming that this is just an absolute count not normalized for the total number of postings. And we're seeing the total number declining.
booleandilemma
Maybe there's another language people are mentioning that isn't Rust, C++, or Python?
raffraffraff
Me, on seeing the post: "I'm learning go. Oh my god am I making a mistake? Oh no. Oh no. Oh no."
high_na_euv
>As a proxy measure for programming language trends, let’s analyze the frequency of programming language mentions in the monthly “Ask HN: Who is hiring?” and “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?” postings on Hacker News for a few years up until February 2025. Below are the graphs.
Thats terrible proxy
kevmo314
The article didn't claim it was a good proxy.
svilen_dobrev
has anyone noticed how the hiring vs hired look like complement to each-other?
i.e. python is needed -> people learn it -> and then no need anymore -> lots of people with python looking for job..
koakuma-chan
-> lots of people complaining that rust doesn't have a django alternative
null
Xebenebex
I’m so confused by this graph, it seems to literally just confirm that hiring is way down across the board. The relationship between language popularity seems mostly the same (maybe less python?)
marifjeren
The chart titles say "frequency" but the y axis seems to be ambiguous about whether it's an absolute count of mentions or mentions-per-word or mentions-per-something-else.
The distinction is important because if it's an absolute count, I think these data would mostly just correlate with the job market overall. In that case, splitting it out by language is sort of uninteresting.
ttul
Might I suggest using `mdates.AutoDateLocator()` on your x-axis to reduce the number of date labels?
jszymborski
If im reading this right this counts the absolute number of mentions rather than relative.
Seeing as the number of job postings is rapidly decreasing (and presumably "Who is hiring" is increasing), the 'rising' trends here are greatly confounded.
softwaredoug
I wonder if Python knowledge is just assumed now. Whereas these other languages would not be...
koakuma-chan
You don't need "X language knowledge," you just need the general knowledge, and more importantly experience.
usrbinenv
I wish this was true. You can't even get hired if you're proficient in a language, but don't know framework X. Which is understandable for, say Ruby (I don't know anyone who knows Ruby, but doesn't know Rails), but it's inexcusable for JavaScript. I've been programming JavaScript since like 1997. Sure, I'll pick up React no problem, but I won't be touching it unless I'm paid, because React is a disgrace.
But it's not just these languages. It's every other language pretty much. You want to be hired as Go dev? Better know how to use gRPC and Kafka. Java? Better know Spring. I can go on and on.
koakuma-chan
I would argue that gRPC and Kafka is "general knowledge" in the sense that these are language-agnostic. In other words there is no requirement "Go language knowledge," but a requirement "gRPC and Kafka knowledge."
koakuma-chan
I personally can't get hired because nobody is hiring for entry-level positions.
Conscat
A large part of why I was hired for my current position is that I can explain why returning by move pessimizes NRVO and why an emplace taking a pr-value of the type it's constructing does nothing useful, and I know how to optimize type erasing templates and which compilers provide which opportunities with which attributes and intrinsics, because I read about C++ every day for years. I taught some of my interviewers a little bit about C++ they didn't know before. There were already people on this team with VASTLY greater experience than me overall, but every team needs a certain amount of language expertise to deliver the highest quality software they can. Someone needs to know it, and language esoterica is not something you just pick up without a specific interest in it.
switchbak
Do you work on high performance/latency sensitive software? That makes total sense in that space, but I also have seen folks obsessing over performance details for contexts where it really doesn’t doesn’t matter at all.
The number of mentions needs to be normalized by the number of job posts.
Example:
- 2021-01: posts=842, python=194, ratio = 194 / 842 = 0.23 (mentions per post)
- 2025-01: posts=487, python=87, ratio = 87 / 487 = 0.18
And then if you want to see a trend, do a moving 6 months average.
[2021-01] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25632982
[2025-01] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42575537