> I've never heard of it before [...] but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics.

Programming is a very broad and deep discipline. If you're a programmer for some time, chances are you know of very niche projects (10 stars on GH) in your domain/stack/platform. It says nothing about your familiarity with much less niche (10k stars on GH) projects outside your domain/stack/etc.

The only ways for you to learn about Odin are to be interested in programming languages in general or to be working in the specific niche Odin tries to conquer (+ some luck).

In other words, a "normal programmer" not knowing about one of literally hundreds of languages out there is expected, but says little about the notability of said language.

> maybe I just happened to miss it?

You did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970800 But that's normal - it's impossible to keep track of domains you're not interested in. Programming language development (for languages that don't pay your bills) is not something programmers need to follow. It's a conscious choice to become interested in this very specific, deep, and niche domain. If you were interested in PLs, you'd almost certainly know about Odin - you probably still wouldn't know Odin itself, unless you're specifically interested in "ergonomic, low-level C replacement" languages and, for some reason, concluded that Zig is not for you.