I don't think "promoted" is the right way to look at it. That kind of implies some kind of paid marketing campaign, while as far as I can tell, the interest in

I don't think "promoted" is the right way to look at it. That kind of implies some kind of paid marketing campaign, while as far as I can tell, the interest in Rust tends to be organic. The thing is, Rust is a bit more novel and interesting than JavaScript or Python. They are both over 25 years old, well established, just about everyone has used or interacted with them. They come from somewhat similar language backgrounds, of dynamically typed garbage collected languages that try to be approachable, with optional static typing these days. Rust is much newer, only being publicly announced a bit over 10 years ago, and stable for seven years, and it offers some unique features that very few other languages outside of academia or very niche fields offer, while also being intended to actually be used as a production language, not just an academic curiosity. This novelty and distinction makes Rust an interesting topic of discussion; not just for folks promoting it, but also skeptics of the approaches it takes. And Hacker News being a discussion site, it's not terribly surprising that a language that is novel, and polarizing, is discussed more often than ones that are pretty much ubiquitous at this point. That doesn't mean it's used more by HN users, but it certainly is discussed more, because it's more interesting to discuss.