Rust’s eight-year reign

For the eighth consecutive year, Rust has ranked as the most desired programming language in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey. Over 80% of developers say they want to use it again next year — an unusual level of enthusiasm for a systems language that first reached a stable release less than a decade ago.

The language’s origins trace back to 2006, when Mozilla developer Graydon Hoare started it as a personal project. According to an interview with MIT Technology Review, the impetus was a crashed elevator: the lift’s C or C++ software had failed due to memory mismanagement, and Hoare wanted a systems language that could be compact yet memory-safe. Mozilla began sponsoring the project in 2009, the source was released publicly in 2010, and Rust 1.0 shipped in May 2015, signaling production readiness.

Since then, adoption has accelerated. Microsoft Windows has used Rust to rewrite core libraries with memory-safe code, and SlashData estimates there were roughly 2.8 million Rust developers worldwide in 2023 — a number that has nearly tripled in two years.

What sets Rust apart from C and C++

Rust is a statically typed systems programming language designed as a safer alternative to C and C++. Types are checked at compile time, which improves error detection and memory safety. But safety isn’t the whole story. Jason Orendorff, a staff software engineer at GitHub and co-author of Programming Rust, described it this way: “To me, what’s great about Rust is that it’s both fast AND reliable. It lets me write multi-headed programs that run on 16 cores and keep them readable, maintainable, and crash-free.”

Several features explain the language’s appeal:

  • Ownership and borrowing. Rust avoids garbage collection. Instead, strict ownership rules manage memory, granting developers precise control over allocation and deallocation while preventing data races and memory bugs.
  • Concurrency. The ownership system enforces rules for data access across threads, making it possible to share data safely without introducing memory-related issues.
  • Cargo package manager. Rust was the first systems language with a standard package manager, and Cargo handles project management, builds, and dependencies. Orendorff credits the ecosystem: “My team takes advantage of high-quality open source packages for hashing, serialization, multithreading, data structures, compression, and a lot more... Without some of these, our project to rethink code search on GitHub wouldn’t have been possible.”
  • Zero-cost abstractions. Teams can write high-level code without adding runtime performance overhead.
  • Pattern matching. Complex data structures can be matched against patterns concisely, making it easy to handle different cases in readable code.
  • Type inference. Rust’s compiler automatically detects types based on context. Orendorff notes: “Many programming languages have some type inference. C# and C++ have some, Rust has a little more.”

Where Rust fits in practice

Rust is a general-purpose language with direct access to hardware and memory, making it suitable for everything from bare-metal code to web backends.

Operating systems and low-level code

The language was born from an operating system problem, so it’s a natural fit for kernels, device drivers, and other low-level components. Redox, a Unix-like OS, is written in Rust, as is Google’s Fuchsia. “If you have a Google Nest smart speaker, it’s likely running Fuchsia,” says Orendorff. Rust also works well for OS-adjacent tasks: GitHub’s Codespaces team uses it to speed up virtual disk startup, and Coursera relies on it in online grading systems that run inside Docker and need minimal dependencies.

Performance-critical backends and web development

Rust’s thread safety and error handling make it a strong option for high-speed, low-latency backend services. GitHub’s code search backend is written in Rust. On the web side, its async programming model supports high-performance servers and APIs, and frameworks like Rocket have made web development more accessible.

Crypto, blockchain, CLI tools, and embedded systems

Blockchain platforms such as Polkadot use Rust for core infrastructure and runtime logic. Its ability to compile to efficient machine code also makes it a strong choice for command-line tools. And in embedded systems and IoT, Rust’s minimal runtime, memory control, and ability to generate small binaries address security, real-time, and efficiency requirements.

For those interested in building blockchain applications, the awesome-blockchain-rust repository lists useful components. A comprehensive guide covers building a CLI app in about 15 minutes.

Why admiration runs deep

Rust’s developer base is smaller than Java’s or Python’s, but it keeps topping admiration surveys — even inspiring a website of developers’ praise. At its core, that admiration comes down to speed, safety, and performance, combined with a robust ecosystem that keeps evolving. New frameworks and tools appear regularly; the awesome-rust repository tracks contributions and resources.

The bottom line: choosing Rust reflects a commitment to innovation without sacrificing stability or security.

For developers new to the language, one practical way to start is with GitHub Copilot, which can offer real-time code suggestions as you learn.