Rust’s Downfall: From Rising Star to Rejected by Major Projects

Rust, once celebrated as a game-changer in systems programming, has found itself facing a wave of criticism following a string of high-profile setbacks. Known for its focus on safety — particularly in concurrency — Rust supports multiple paradigms, including functional, imperative, and generic programming. Its syntax is reminiscent of C and C++, making it accessible yet powerful.

However, recent events have cast a shadow over Rust’s momentum. In late December, Daniel Stenberg, the creator of the renowned open-source project curl, announced the discontinuation of support for the Rust-based Hyper HTTP backend, along with the complete removal of related code. This decision has sparked widespread discussion within the developer community.

“The journey is ending. The experiment is over. We tried, but we failed.”

Stenberg began exploring the integration of a Rust-based HTTP backend for curl back in 2020. The goal was to leverage Rust’s memory safety to offer a more secure alternative to the native HTTP implementation used by curl/libcurl. This ambitious initiative was supported by ISRG, the organization behind Let’s Encrypt…