What is Rust lang ? What is it used for ? Is it worth your time ?
If you ask any of the programmer out there that what would be their choice between HIGH level language and LOW level language, I hope most of the answers would be HIGH level language and some would choose it every time, but why ? LOW level languages tends to be more memory efficient ? right ? Yes, they are. But the other advantages in HIGH level language such as easier syntax, readability, etc outweighs the pros of LOW level language.
But someone out in the field has a solution to this one, yes it is RUST !!!
RUST programming language helps you to write high performance, reliable and safe applications.
Wait…This could be achieved by other programming languages also right ? So what is special with RUST ?
RUST === Syntactically HIGH level language
RUST === Performance and memory efficiency of a LOW level language
Key factors that makes RUST stand out from others :
- RUST helps you gain access to LOW LEVEL DETAILS in the system ( such as memory usage )
- It helps you to build safe applications, what do we mean by safe here is, it resolves concurrency issues and provide thread safe applications
- Many software that are built using LOW level code requires keen testing to find out system level bugs, but RUST has a power packed compiler that prevents compiling code that has errors ( don’t expect it to prevent logical errors, it’s in your court )
- As an added gift, it gives you an insight into systems concept, therefore enabling you to understand and dive deeper into operating systems.
- One of the main reasons that RUST is highly performant is it does not have a GARBAGE COLLECTOR !!! But how does neglecting garbage collector makes it efficient ? Refer this to see how garbage collector can affect performance
These factors looks good, but what about the community ?
RUST has a pretty good community support, where you can discuss about your queries as a user or you could give your inputs on developing the language itself and chat platforms are available to support you.
Last but not least, how much it is used out there in the development field ?
Don’t worry, you are not alone, big tech like MOZILLA, DROPBOX, BRAINTREE etc. uses RUST in their application development.
So is it worth ?
“IT DEPENDS”, you might not use it in your day to day development but I hope learning RUST would definitely be worthwhile.
