Rust: The Programming Language for Safety and Performance

TL;DR

Rust is a promising programming language that offers superior safety and performance, attracting increasing interest from developers and outperforming other languages in recent benchmarks.

Contribution

This study surveys and analyzes research demonstrating Rust's safety and performance advantages over established languages, highlighting its potential as the future programming language.

Findings

Rust shows overall superiority in safety and security

Benchmark results favor Rust over other languages

Rust's features attract more programmers

Abstract

Rust is a young programming language gaining increased attention from software developers since it was introduced to the world by Mozilla in 2010. In this study, we attempt to answer several research questions. Does Rust deserve such increased attention? What is there in Rust that is attracting programmers to this new language? Safety and performance were among the very first promises of Rust, as was claimed by its early developers. Is Rust a safe language with high performance? Have these claims been achieved? To answer these questions, we surveyed and analyzed recent research on Rust and research that benchmarks Rust with other available prominent programming languages. The results show that Rust deserves the increased interest by programmers, and recent experimental results in benchmarking research show Rust's overall superiority over other well-established languages in terms of performance, safety, and security. Even though this study was not comprehensive (and more work must be done in this area), it informs the programming and research communities on the promising features of Rust as the language of choice for the future.