Should I use Rust?
In mid 2023, I prepared a series of videos to give people an “Executive Overview of Rust”, answering questions that I had been asked repeatedly by various people in different roles, about why I thought that Rust had “turned the corner” from being very interesting to being ready for wide-scale production use.
This article is Part 1 in a 7-Part Series.
- Part 1 - This Article
- Part 2 - Is Rust popular enough?
- Part 3 - Is Rust safe?
- Part 4 - Is Rust fast?
- Part 5 - Is Rust difficult to learn?
- Part 6 - Trivial example of safety in Rust
- Part 7 - Getting started with Rust
For people who already know about Rust, none of this should be new or interesting. However, I’ve encountered a bunch of people who didn’t know much about Rust, and a few who thought they knew something. Here is a small sample of things I heard, all from professional experts:
- One didn’t believe Rust could ever be fast due to its garbage collector. The premise that garbage collectors slow things down is correct, but Rust doesn’t have a garbage collector.
- One thought no one would be using Rust in another few months, that it was a “fad”. I can’t predict long-term, but I certainly predict that it will be around longer than a few months or even years, and I think there’s ample proof, mostly the investments and released code from some of the biggest software companies in the world.
- One thought it was crazy that any systems product hadn’t already been rewritten in Rust. This correctly understands the promise of Rust, but neither the investment level needed to rewrite old code nor the volume of old code and practicalities of professional software engineering.
The full video series is just under 30 minutes, or 15 minutes if you watch at double speed. Unsurprisingly, it will not teach you to program in Rust. The goal is to be an Executive Overview of Rust that motivates why you should consider using Rust for a new systems project, and enough background to reasonably evaluate whether or not to use Rust for that project. Finally, it gives steps to get started if you do want to take a deeper dive into learning the language.
This first video introduces the series.
This article is Part 1 in a 7-Part Series.
- Part 1 - This Article
- Part 2 - Is Rust popular enough?
- Part 3 - Is Rust safe?
- Part 4 - Is Rust fast?
- Part 5 - Is Rust difficult to learn?
- Part 6 - Trivial example of safety in Rust
- Part 7 - Getting started with Rust