Rust’s Expanding Horizons: Memory Safe and Lightning Fast
Oct 10, 2024
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Joel Marcey, Director of Technology at the Rust Foundation, shares insights on Rust's remarkable rise as a programming language, praised for its speed and safety. He discusses its ambitious expansion into sectors like game development and embedded systems while underlining its growing role in web applications through WebAssembly. Marcey also explores Rust’s competitive edge over Go in performance-critical tasks, highlights recent updates like Rust 1.81, and reveals government interest in enhancing security initiatives within the Rust ecosystem.
Rust's versatility is expanding beyond systems programming into embedded systems and game development, showcasing its growing adoption across various domains.
The Rust Security Initiative and government projects aim to enhance security and credibility, positioning Rust as a reliable choice for critical software applications.
Deep dives
Vibrant Rust Community and Conference Insights
The Rust community exhibits strong motivation and vibrancy, especially highlighted at a recent conference where attendance reached full capacity. The event showcased a variety of topics, including the logistics of the Rust project and its applications in game development and the Linux operating system. The enthusiasm among participants was palpable, reflecting a collective desire to see Rust grow as a leading programming language. This indicates that the community is not only engaged but also actively contributing to the expansion of Rust's usage across different sectors.
Rust's Expanding Adoption and Use Cases
Rust is gaining traction in the programming world, currently ranking among the top 15 programming languages in popularity. It is recognized not only for its original purposes in systems and backend programming but is also starting to penetrate fields such as embedded systems, game development, and even applications within the Linux kernel. The language is particularly noted for its memory safety and efficiency, making it ideal for critical applications that require high performance. This diversification in use cases positions Rust favorably as it looks to expand its influence in the tech landscape.
Security Initiatives and Government Adoption
The Rust Security Initiative aims to maintain Rust as a secure development platform, focusing on threat modeling and addressing vulnerabilities in its ecosystem. Recent efforts include projects to enhance supply chain security by tracking the provenance of code, thereby preventing vulnerabilities. Furthermore, a significant endorsement from the U.S. government, with an initiative to translate legacy C code to Rust, indicates a notable shift towards adopting Rust in federal projects. This governmental interest not only bolsters Rust's credibility but may also inspire other organizations to consider its benefits in their software development processes.
Rust has maintained its place among the top 15 programming languages and has been the most admired language for nine consecutive years. In a New Stack Makers podcast, Joel Marcey, director of technology at the Rust Foundation, discussed the language's growing importance, including initiatives to improve its security, performance, and adoption in various domains. While Rust is widely used in systems and backend programming, it’s also gaining traction in embedded systems, safety-critical applications, game development, and even the Linux kernel.
Marcey highlighted Rust’s strengths as a safe and fast systems language, noting its use on the web through WebAssembly (Wasm), though adoption there is still early. He also addressed Rust vs. Go, explaining that Rust excels in performance-critical applications. Marcey discussed recent updates, such as Rust 1.81, and project goals for 2024, which include a new edition and async improvements.
He also touched on government interest in Rust, including DARPA’s initiative to convert C code to Rust, and the Rust Security Initiative, aimed at maintaining the language’s strong security reputation.