If you want to make a silly, minimal effort hobby project simply don't use Rust. I'm gonna be honest I don't understand this entire genre of using extremely complex, highly optimized systems languages for tools that don't need them. Your flow chart should basically go like this:
"Do I need zero cost abstractions because I'm writing a computationally expensive very serious project?" If the answer is no use a garbage collected, runtime managed language.
I write my hobby projects because writing them is fun. I don't find writing Ruby, Python, Go, and a host of other so-called "more appropriate" languages fun.
If someone enjoys writing Rust, it's natural that they'll reach for it when they're looking to write something for fun. If the tools/libraries in that language exist to make writing a particular type of thing more fun or easier, then more the better.
I don’t know about that. I already knew a little Rust last month when I wanted to write a REST API server that would benefit from being deployable as a single executable. I probably spent a grand total of 2-3 hours researching which framework to use (actix-web for me), reading the code, and implementing the endpoints I needed. The end result ended up looking an awful lot like a Python Flask app. The actual code writing part of the project wasn’t any more complicated than using any other language might’ve been.
Learning Rust and learning web service programming at the same time would have a steep curve. If you already know the basics of Rust and have written web services before, writing a new one in Rust needn’t be stressful.
1. Do I like the language enough to use it for fun? (no: go to (2))
2. Am I neutral towards the language? (no: go to (3))
3. Am I fine with other people using it for fun? (no: go to (4))
4. Feel free to harangue people who explicitly say they are using it for fun if their reasons for using it is not a 100% utilitarian (which is very likely to be the case: refer to the for fun section)
"Do I need zero cost abstractions because I'm writing a computationally expensive very serious project?" If the answer is no use a garbage collected, runtime managed language.