The State of Rust Backend Programming: Is It Worth It?

Hey guys, this is my first post here. I’ve been in exploration mode for the past few days, diving into Rust and trying to figure out if it’s a good fit for backend development. I really like the language.. it’s fun, well-designed, and has some serious advantages like memory safety and concurrency.

That being said, I’ve also run into a lot of confusion and roadblocks (while working with the SDL2 binding for rust) that make me question whether it’s worth pursuing for backend programming.

My Concerns ->

Learning Curve rust is hard. The borrow checker is a beast to deal with when you’re just starting out. It’s great for catching bugs at compile time, but it slows me down a lot.
Ecosystem The rust ecosystem for backend development is still maturing. Frameworks like axum and actix-web seem solid, but they don’t feel as feature-rich or beginner-friendly as tools I’ve used in other languages. Is this something that gets easier with time, or is it a limitation of the ecosystem?
Development Speed While rust forces you to write safer code, it can feel like a grind compared to languages where you can just whip something up and iterate quickly. For someone building backend services, this feels like a big tradeoff...?
Adoption and Industry Use I know Rust is popular for systems programming, but how viable is it for backend development? Are companies actively using Rust for this purpose, or is it still more of a niche choice?

Questions ->

Is Rust a reasonable language for backend programming, or am I better off looking elsewhere?
If not Rust, what other language would you recommend? (Please don’t suggest Python—I’ve already been doing backend dev in Python for a while.)

I’m open to hearing your experiences, advice, and honest takes. I want to make sure I’m not wsting my time or just chasing the hype and that the language I choose fits the needs of backend development.

thanks in advance!