Choosing the right programming language is essential to the success of your project. Rust stands out in the myriad of languages as a compelling option for creating your next application. Rust is a power-pack language that offers a transformative experience for developers looking to build reliable and effective software solutions thanks to its unique combination of performance, safety, and concurrency.  In this blog, we are going to discuss the capabilities of Rust Programming language and reasons to choose Rust for your next application. 

Introduction To Rust

Created in 2006 by Graydon Hoare and introduced in 2010 by Mozilla, Rust programming language has become one of the most popular languages worldwide within only a few couples of years. But as we know every programming language varies in terms of functionality and efficiency, Rust is also created with its own sets of features.

Rust stands out due to its unmatched emphasis on memory safety. With Rust programming, you can say goodbye to pesky bugs like null pointer dereferences and data races that often plague other languages.  By identifying any potential issues at compile time, Rust’s ownership and borrowing mechanism guarantees that your code is free of memory leaks and dangling references. You may create reliable, secure, and predictable software thanks to Rust’s unique sets of features.

Rust doesn’t stop at Memory Safety alone,  there are many awesome capabilities of Rust that will convince you to choose this language for your next project.

Reasons To Choose Rust For Your Next Big Application

C and C++  are two of the most widely used languages in the world and are preferred for their speed and efficiency however when it comes to memory safety, Rust has an upper edge over them. C and Rust programming languages have similar syntax but the latter offers memory management and safer concurrency.

Apart from this, there are so many reasons why Rust is preferred by a whopping 83.5% of programmers for over 4 years now (according to the recent Stack Overflow Survey). Below we have stated the reasons to choose Rust for development:

• Memory Safety:  Memory safety is one of the best advantages of Rust Solution. It offers memory management and it does not need a garbage collector to run in the background which saves you from so much manual work. Rust allows you to optimize your code for optimal efficiency by giving you fine-grained control over memory allocation and low-level processes. With its fearless concurrency model, you can take full use of modern hardware without sacrificing reliability since it makes use of the ownership system to provide safe parallel execution. 
• Zero-Cost Abstractions: It is resource efficient and helps you to identify the bugs at an early stage. It has zero-cost abstractions. Thus it will accept all the loops, the flavor of code, and the closure you want to use and compiles it without affecting the overall performance of the code. Since Rust has a low overhead, it is best suited for the embedded systems which are commonly used in home appliances and machines. 
• Maintainability: You do not need to rewrite the type of variable in Rust as it offers you high maintainability. It is a statically typed and strong programming language which means there is a very low probability to write incorrect programs with Rust. As you may already know the complexity of a program increases as the code grows but since it is a statically typed language, it will simplify the process by allowing you to check what’s going on with the code you’ve written.
• Speed and High Performance: Speed and robust performance are advantages of the Rust solution. Rust’s performance beats C++ and Python. It doesn’t require garbage collection which aids in its speed. The compiler points out the wrong code and corrects it which prevents the incorrect code from causing any significant problems to the system. 
• Suitable for Cross-platform applications: If you want to build a cross-platform that can be operated on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS, etc, then Rust is a good choice. The language allows you t code in both the front end as well as back end. And the Rust frameworks (Rocket, Actix, and Nickel) make the development process easier for you.
• Expansive Ecosystem: Rust is more than just a language or a compiler, its expansive ecosystem says all about it. The production of quality software requires a lot more aspects and the expanding ecosystem of the language considers it all. For instance, Cargo is Rust’s build system and command line tool that helps developers to manage dependencies, generate documents, and run tests. Another proof of its expanding ecosystem is its growing community. Rust’s community site, crates take care of your library needs. The total no. of community-created libraries, tools, and frameworks has crossed 57,000. So, last but not least the growing community and its continuously expanding ecosystem are what make it the Programming Language of Future Developers.

When should you develop an application in Rust?

• A developer should use Rust language when the application requires processing large amounts of data.  
• Rust is also an ideal choice if you prefer memory safety over a simple and speedy development process. The programming language ensures that you don’t face any memory safety bugs during and after the completion of application development as the compiler inspects all the data pointers and provides your application an impeccable memory safety.
• The Rust programming language is also recommended if a developer wants fine-grained control over the behavior of the threads. 

Rust Language Uses

• Device Drivers & Operating Systems

You can use the Rust programming language for the development of device drivers and operating systems. Since it is a highly concurrent and high-performing language ever, many operating systems are written in this language. Here are the names of some popular operating systems built using the Rust coding language -QuilOS, BlogOS, Redox, Tock, Tefflin, IntermezzOS, and Rux, etc. Rust’s design, which puts a strong focus on memory safety and fine-grained resource control, makes it a fantastic option for systems programming. Operating systems, device drivers, file systems, and other low-level software where performance, stability, and security are crucial are particularly well suited for using it.

• Game Development 

Rust language is also preferred by many developers to build games. The programming language is performance-oriented as the run-time system does the garbage collection itself which means you do not need to do it manually in the Rust-built applications. Moreover, its concurrency prevents the data race and its robust memory management feature makes secures it from random crashes.

• Networking & Web Services

Rust is a good choice for the development of networking and web services because of its balance of safety and performance. High-performance servers, routers, proxies, and other network-related applications can be built on top of its reliable handling of concurrent requests and memory safety.

• Embedded Devices

Rust is also a suitable programming language for developing embedded systems due to its low-level control, short runtime, and effective resource management. Rust’s safety features and low runtime overhead assure safe and effective performance in contexts with limited resources, whether you’re developing firmware for microcontrollers, IoT devices, or robotics.

• Using WebAssembly (Wasm) Applications

The ability of Rust to compile to WebAssembly (Wasm) opens the scope to build interesting browser-based apps. You can build complex applications, games, simulations, and even virtual reality experiences by leveraging Rust’s ability to produce safe, fast code as it can be executed right in the browser.

• Command-line Tools

Rust is a fantastic choice for developing command-line tools and utilities due to its robust tooling and capacity to compile to a standalone binary. Rust enables developers to create robust and reliable command-line interfaces with simplicity thanks to its expressive syntax, robust type system, and simple integration with existing systems.

• Cryptography & Security

If you want to build applications that deal with cryptography and security, Rust is a great fit because of its safety and memory management capabilities. Due to its excellent efficiency and capacity to avoid typical flaws, cryptographic algorithms, and security-critical code can be implemented reliably and effectively.

Top Companies That Adopted Rust Language 

Being a new-age programming language with impressive memory management, safety, speed, and high-performance features, Rust has also been adopted by many tech giants such as Amazon, Dropbox, Facebook, Figma, Microsoft, and many others. 

Below we have mentioned reasons Why Rust Language has been used by the Top Tech Giants:

• Figma: Figma Chose Rust to rewrite their multiplayer syncing engine as the language offers great speed with low resource usage and safety. The old server of Figma was causing some performance problems due to the garbage collector which is now resolved by the Rust lang.
• Facebook: Earlier Facebook’s source control backend was written in Python but later on Rust has been chosen by the source control team to rewrite it. The reason stated was the high costs of Facebook bugs. Since the Rust detects the series bugs during the time of compiling, The cost of a bug at compile time is noted to be less than in production.
• Dropbox: Dropbox uses the Rust Language for various parts of its file synchronization engine. Its engine has high concurrency, so it is hard for developers to write, test, and debug it, therefore they chose Rust for rewriting. It has helped Dropbox’s engine boost performance, ergonomics, and correctness which tamed the sync’s complexity.  
• Microsoft: Recently, Microsoft is also experimenting with Rust. The tech giant is trying to integrate Rust into its C and C++ codebases. The primary reason for adopting Rust is the Memory safety offered by this new-age programming language. For more than a decade nearly 70% of the Common Vulnerabilities ad Exposures observed at Microsoft have been blamed on the memory safety issue. And hence, they are trying to use Rust to solve this issue.
• Cloudflare: Cloudflare also used Rust as a replacement of C in its core edge logic. The reason was that C doesn’t offer memory safety. Cloudflare stated that they chose Rust because of their requirement of memory safety, performance, low usage of memory, and efficiency to become a part of their other products such as Spectrum. 

Conclusion 

Keeping the growing community of Rust and its notable advantages in consideration, it would be fair to say that Rust is the future. It’s impressive performance, tooling, and expanding community that is constantly working to improve and advance the language furthermore made us conclude that Rust is a good choice for programmers who might want to prioritize performance, memory management, and safety while working on a project. 

As you embark on your journey towards building a product using Rust programming language, you’ll find a vibrant and welcoming community eager to share knowledge and support one another. You will also find official documentation online forums and resources that will help you overcome any challenges you may encounter along the way.