It doesn't HAVE to be used for bare metal, but that's what it's best at, but it is bad for quick prototyping, that's for sure. So if you had a project that needed a project that needed quick turn around and rapid prototyping and someone wanted to use Rust because it's the "new hotness" or whatever, then absolutely not. It's the wrong tool for the job. The same as C, or C++ would be the wrong tool. Python is great for something like that.
Just like if you wanted heavy number crunching and data manipulation, I'd push someone towards R and Scala as they have the libraries to handle it (and, I'd also say Python, but I'm starting to show my biases here). Go is great for back end systems, as that's what it was designed for, and it's now getting libraries built out for it for other things to fill in gaps for other things, just as Rust is filling in other spaces, but there's only so far it can go from its original design doc. The GC makes it, inherently, not a systems language. That doesn't mean it isn't great at other things. Rust is great as a systems language, that doesn't mean it isn't great at other things, but it's terrible as a rapid prototyping language. It lacks that capability. It wasn't designed for that =/
Just like if you wanted heavy number crunching and data manipulation, I'd push someone towards R and Scala as they have the libraries to handle it (and, I'd also say Python, but I'm starting to show my biases here). Go is great for back end systems, as that's what it was designed for, and it's now getting libraries built out for it for other things to fill in gaps for other things, just as Rust is filling in other spaces, but there's only so far it can go from its original design doc. The GC makes it, inherently, not a systems language. That doesn't mean it isn't great at other things. Rust is great as a systems language, that doesn't mean it isn't great at other things, but it's terrible as a rapid prototyping language. It lacks that capability. It wasn't designed for that =/