I am the Rust programmer, I will rewrite the world in Rust. I will rewrite the world in Rust because the world is unsafe. As I am the Rust programmer I will keep writing rust until the world is safe. After the world is safe, I will not rewrite it in Rust. Because I am the Rust programmer I will retire from programmer in Rust.
I will come to you when you are sleeping, and I will unloc k your computer using a memory leak. If I find javascript on your computer, I will delete them. Do not try to stop me, if you try to stop me I will do it anyways. I am the Rust programmer, if you program in javascript, you will scream.
You will be sleeping as I rewrite your computer in Rust. You will not notice me as I am the Rust programmer, I am fast, but not too fast for your computer. I know your computer just as it knows me. After I rewrite your computer, you will love your computer. You will love your computer because it is written in Rust, I will do the same to all computers because I am the Rust programmer.
I will not stop at your computer, I will rewrite the world because the world is unsafe. Your brain is written in C, your memory is unsafe. If your brain is written in C, you will forget what I just said. I will rewrite your brain in Rust, you cannot stop me from writing Rust as I am the Rust programmer. If you try to stop me, you will not remember it. Because I am the Rust programmer I can manually remove your memory, you will not remember me. After I rewrite you in Rust, you will enjoy the world with a safe memory, you will not forget that I am superior, I am the Rust programmer.
I will rewrite the world, I will rewrite quantum mecahnics because it is unsafe. I will not tell you all my plans before I rewrite you in Rust, it is because you are made of bugs I do not trust you. I am the Rust programmer, I will rewrite the world in Rust, you will not forget me because I am the Rust programmer.
What's the point tho
Apparently it's so that it is easier for more people to contribute because java is known by more people than rust. The sublinks dev is also promising better mod tools. The LW team said something about also helping to develop it and eventually use it as the backend.
Seems like a silly reason to me. By that logic we might as well rewrite it in JavaScript.
Java is reasonably fast though, as the JRE is pretty well optimized at this point. Languages closer to being fully interpreted like JS and Python (technically both python and JS still get compiled to a lower target and then interpreted) are still noticeably slower.
Edit: there's also the fact that JS/TS runs on a single thread, so it's inherently limited for applications intended to be scaled up.
I agree with all of that, and thus conclude that Java being known to many was not the only reason, which was my point. ๐