1.1 Why Rust?
Rust is a modern programming language that uniquely combines high performance with safety. While its concepts like ownership and borrowing might initially seem challenging, they empower developers to write efficient and reliable code. Rust’s syntax may feel unconventional for those familiar with other languages, but it provides powerful abstractions that simplify the process of creating robust software.
So, why has Rust gained popularity despite its challenges?
Rust aims to balance the performance advantages of low-level systems programming languages with the safety, reliability, and ease of use found in high-level languages. Low-level languages such as C and C++ offer high performance with minimal resource consumption but are prone to errors that can affect reliability. On the other hand, high-level languages like Python, Kotlin, Julia, JavaScript, C#, and Java are easier to use but lack the low-level control needed for systems programming, often relying on garbage collection and large runtime environments.
Languages like Rust, Go, Swift, Zig, Nim, Crystal, and V aim to bridge this gap. Rust, in particular, has been the most successful in achieving this balance, as shown by its growing popularity.
As a systems programming language, Rust enforces memory safety through its ownership model and borrow checker, eliminating common issues like null pointer dereferencing, use-after-free, and buffer overflows—without needing a garbage collector. Rust avoids hidden, costly operations like implicit type conversions or unnecessary heap allocations, giving developers more control over performance. Copying large data structures is typically avoided by using references or move semantics, which transfer ownership of data. When copying is necessary, developers must explicitly request it using functions like clone(). Despite its performance-oriented constraints, Rust provides conveniences like iterators and closures, allowing for ease of use while maintaining high performance.
Rust’s ownership system not only guarantees memory safety but also enables fearless concurrency by preventing data races at compile time. This makes writing concurrent programs safer and more straightforward compared to languages where such errors are caught at runtime—or not at all.
Although Rust doesn’t follow the traditional class-based object-oriented programming (OOP) model, it adopts OOP principles through traits and structs, allowing for polymorphism and code reuse in a more flexible manner. Rust also avoids exceptions, opting for the Result and Option types for error handling. This approach encourages developers to handle errors explicitly, avoiding unexpected runtime failures.
Rust’s development began in 2006, initiated by Graydon Hoare with contributions from volunteers and later supported by Mozilla. The first stable version, Rust 1.0, was released in 2015, and by version 1.81, Rust has continued to evolve while maintaining backward compatibility. Today, Rust boasts a large, active developer community. After Mozilla’s involvement decreased, the Rust community established the Rust Foundation, supported by companies like AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Huawei, ensuring the long-term development and sustainability of Rust.
Rust’s development is driven by its community through an open process involving RFCs (Request for Comments), where new features and improvements are proposed and discussed. This collaborative and transparent process has fostered Rust’s rapid growth and the development of a large ecosystem of libraries and tools. The community’s commitment to quality and collaboration has transformed Rust into more than just a language—it’s a movement toward safer and more efficient programming.
Rust’s versatility has made it popular with companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Amazon, and Discord. For example, Dropbox uses Rust to optimize file storage systems, and Discord leverages it for high-performance networking. Rust is also widely used in system programming, embedded systems, WebAssembly for web development, and in building applications for PCs (Windows, Linux, macOS) and mobile platforms. Rust’s inclusion in Linux kernel development is a notable achievement, marking the first time another language has been added alongside C. Rust is also gaining traction in the blockchain industry.
Rust’s ecosystem is robust and mature, offering a powerful compiler, a modern build system with Cargo, and an extensive package repository, Crates.io, which hosts thousands of open-source libraries. Tools like rustfmt for formatting and clippy for linting ensure that Rust code remains clean and consistent. Rust also provides modern GUI frameworks such as EGUI and Xilem, game engines like Bevy, and even entire operating systems like Redox-OS.
Although Rust is a statically-typed, compiled language—often less suited for rapid prototyping compared to interpreted languages—tools like cargo-script and improved compile times have made Rust more accessible for quick development.
Since this book assumes familiarity with Rust’s basic merits, we will not delve further into the pros and cons here. Instead, we’ll highlight Rust’s core features and its well-established ecosystem. The LLVM-based compiler (rustc), the Cargo package manager, Crates.io, and the large, vibrant community are key factors in Rust’s growing prominence. Let’s now explore what makes Rust stand out.
Whether you come from a background in JavaScript, Python, or C++, this book will help bridge your existing knowledge to the Rust world.