In this article, I will give you a basic understanding of what Rust is. So why is it so popular among present developers? As a matter of fact, Rust became the most loved programming language in a row for the last 5 years. (Source: StackOverflow surveys)
First, let’s start with;
What is Rust?
Rust is a low level statically-typed multi-paradigm programming language. It mainly focuses on safety and performance.
What is a statically typed programming language?
Statically typed is a programming language characteristic. It means the variable types are explicitly declared and determined at compile time. This characteristic mainly lets the compiler decide whether the variable can perform with the actions requested from it.
Why use Rust?
The main reason is that it solves many problems that C/C++ struggles with. Similarly, it focuses on system memory errors and building concurrent programs.
Benefits
Better Compiler Safety
Memory management is crucial when it comes to systems programming. Rust prevents the manual management issues that come with the C programming language.
Rust’s ownership system analyses the program’s memory management at compile time. Therefore, it handles poor memory management and optimises the implementation.
Better Concurrency
Rust can prevent data races at compile-time due to its borrow checker.
Data races is a race condition or a race hazard. It is the condition of a system trying to access the same memory as another process. Likewise, this leads to a break in the program's behaviour. It takes care of the race conditions, as it prevents undefined application behaviour.
Zero-cost Abstractions
Additionally, it controls the zero-cost abstractions. The zero-cost abstractions make sure that there is virtually no runtime overhead for the abstractions used.
What are the uses?
Rust is a low-level programming language. It is useful when you need to optimise the resources. Because of its statically typed system, it helps with a lot of compilation time bugs.
Few purposes;
- A powerful, cross-platform command-line tools
- A distributed online services
- An embedded devices
- Browser engines
- Linux Kernels
Is Rust good for Web Development?
At present, few frameworks are built on Rust programming language. Such as Actix Web and Rocket. Applications that require high performance can use the above-mentioned frameworks. It is relatively new; therefore, there will be more web development frameworks in the future.
High-end applications or even performance-dependent micro-services are best suited for using Rust.
We at Fonseka, try to adopt new technologies and frameworks that will help our client's applications. With this in mind, if you have a project in mind that requires high performance, feel free to contact us.
