Still in love with Rust
&gt; Rust will force you to be a good programmer,<p>&gt; [if] you like it or not.<p>This is probably the best in-a-nutshell statement that describes what a good programming language is for me.<p>I had similar moments in the past. Before Python I cared about indention to some degree. But once I got used to the way Python forces you to indent your code, I came to the realization that this is pretty much the way I should format my code anyway and it influenced my coding style in all other block-based languages for the better.<p>Clojure was another language that showed me how functional programming should be done. My code in all languages changed and I used a lot less variables and a lot more constants and parameters. My code and the systems I created became a lot simpler and much more robust as a consequence. I had used Haskell before but it never really transformed my mind the way Clojure did. I also got a really good grasp on destructuring and list comprehension.<p>Rust offered me several relevations. I finally understood test-driven-development because the language has excellent support for it. I also understood RAII more deeply. Traits became clear to me (Clojure protocols and Haskell type classes felt strange to me). I finally understood why the Maybe monad in Haskell&#x2F;ML is one of the simplest and yet bests ideas in programming.<p>And there is the borrow checker. I already had a functional programming mindset when I picked up Rust. But having a clear owner of data takes the mindset of functional programming even further[1], even when mutability is involved. It is a lot easier to reason about your code when you know exactly which operations can (and should) change a variable.<p>An aspect that the Python, Clojure and Rust communities have in common is that they emphasize idiomatic code a lot. Therefore it is much easier for newcomers to find examples of professional-level code and learn things the right way. And it is much easier to dive into a new codebase. Clojure is actually a very extreme case of this, because Clojure code tends to use a lot of 1-letter parameter names. In most programming languages you are allowed to have the variable &quot;i&quot; for looping over numbers. But not much more. In contrast, Clojure has a list of well-established 1-letter variables that are recognized by everyone in the community.<p>[1] This does not adhere to the classical definition of functional programming but I feel that it is a natural extension to it.