Rust vs Go: Which Is Better?

It is a question every programmer and developer has asked, and many others still ask, even when they have made their own decision. Rust vs. Go: Which one should I choose in 2023? Or which language to choose: Golang or Rust?

Golang and Rust are the youngest programming languages in use today. Go was launched at Google in 2009, and followed by Go, Rust was launched at Mozilla in 2010. Selecting the ideal programming language is seen as an important preference to prosper in this dynamic environment. The situation is very complex for programmers to select any one language over the other and develop reliable and systematic applications. Developers are always updated with emerging technology, and they can easily deal with the regularly changing mechanisms.

The latest programming languages in the multi-paradigm system are Go and Rust. Both languages have similarities and differences, as both are popular programming language tools at present. Along with similarities, there are major differences between Go and Rust.

Through this article, we will debate the basic differences and similarities in Rust vs Go.

About Go

It is an open-source computer language, making it easier to create a simple, effective, and sturdy software. Go is precise, smooth, and effectual. It is handy to write a program that makes use of all the multi-core and networked machines.

Go or Golang was created by Google engineers who wanted to create a language that offers the efficiency of C++ but is way easier to learn, write, read, and install.

Golang is mainly designed for creating web APIs and small services that are scalable, especially with its goroutines. The Golang assembles fluently to machine code and provides the comfort of garbage collection and the power to represent run-time.

It is a fast, statically typed, assembled language that gives the feeling of an interpreted and dynamically-typed language. The languages of Goroutines make it convenient for developers to create applications that can take full dominance of concurrency, like major e-commerce websites by arranging workloads across several CPU cores at the same time.

Thus, stating it precisely, it is perfect for a parallel computing environment. Garbage collection is one more Go feature that guarantees effective memory management. Thus, unused memory can be used for new items, and objects that are not used are “trashed” from the memory.

About Rust

Rust is a statically typed, assembled programming language with the assistance of several programming prototypes. The language was initially created to prioritize performance and safety, with safe accordance being the major goal.

Rust was mainly developed to process CPU-intensive activities, like performing algorithms and storing a broad amount of data. Therefore, projects that demand high performance mostly use Rust over Golang. 

Ideally, Rust is a replica of C++. Unlike Golang and C++, Rust does not have the feature of garbage collection. Rather than that, Rust makes use of a borrowed checker to certify memory safety. This borrow checker executes data ownership protocols to avoid data races. Here, data race means more than one pointer procuring the same memory location.

Rust is a type of programming language that includes a large or small group of computer programming over an enlarged period of time. For this type of programming, Rust carries out and promotes a highly concurrent and greatly safe system. 

Rust is now used in the prime parts of the Firefox browser. After 2016, Rust has been announced as the most admired programming language. Rust is a very elementary language to understand, and one can learn it in a mere five minutes.

Rust vs Go: Pros And Cons

To decide accurately between Go vs Rust, it is probably better to look at the advantages and disadvantages of Golang and Rust. Now that we have seen a brief rundown of each language, here are its pros and cons:

Golang Pros

• It is a clean and simple programming language.
• It is a well-assembled language.
• Go is famous for its speed.
• Go offers great flexibility and is simple to use.
• It is extensible.
• It is cross-platform.
• It can detect variables that are unused.
• Golang has a static analysis tool.

Golang Cons

• Devoid of manual memory management.
• It gives vibes of superficiality as it is too easy.
• There are not many libraries, as it is still very young.
• Some of its features, like pointer-arithmetic, are low-level.
• There are several limitations to Golang’s tooling.
• It can be difficult to analyze errors in Golang.

Rust Pros

• Offers extraordinary speed.
• Provides best memory safety due to the compiler.
• Faster run time for zero-cost abstractions.
• It is also cross-platform.
• It gives predictable run-time behavior.
• It offers access to great patterns and syntax.
• It comes with a special ownership function.
• It is easy to combine with C and other languages.

Rust Cons

• Even though it is recognized as being fast, people claim it to be slower than F#.
• It has scope-based memory management that makes an infinite loop of leak memory.
• The purely functional data frameworks are unusable in Rust because of the absence of garbage collection.
• Rust doesn’t have the same level of monkey patching supported by Python and Perl languages.
• People may find concerns in the syntax as the language is still new.
• It sometimes gets slow during compilation and becomes difficult to learn.

Rust vs Go: What the Numbers Say

According to a report by Go, the Go language is recognized as the most preferred language by participants. 

Now that we have got a basic understanding of Golang and Rust languages, let’s move ahead to the Rust vs Go comparisons to clearly acknowledge the differences in both languages.

Rust vs Go: Key Differences

The major difference between Golang and Rust is:

• Performance
• Concurrence
• Memory Safety
• Development Speed
• Developer Experience

Performance

Google launched Go as an alternative to C++, which was simple to code and learn. Go offers and permits you to utilize Goroutines, through which one can run functions by simply including the Go syntax.

In spite of all these practical functions and multicore CPU support, Rust dominates and outperforms Go.

Go vs Rust: performance is one feature where Rust receives more points as compared to Golang. These programming languages are created to function with C++ and C equivalents. However, Golang’s speed of development fall behind a bit compared to Rust’s elevated performance with regards to Rust vs Go: Performance comparison.

Whilst the output of Rust shows dominance over Go, Rust lags in compilation speed, as Go beats Rust there.

However, people do not bother much about compilation time, so, overall, Rust is the winner here.

Concurrence

Golang supports concurrency and gets the upper hand over Rust in this factor. The concurrency model of Go allows developers to install workloads across different CPU cores, making Go a coherent language.

So, in situations where you run a website handling API s requests, Golang goroutines will entail you to run each request as a subprocess. This process improves efficiency, as it lessens the tasks to all the CPU cores.

On the other hand, Rust only has a native await or sync syntax. Therefore, programmers prefer Go in terms of concurrency.

Memory Safety

Rust uses a compile-time title strategy with a zero-cost interruption for memory safety. Rust will not be capable of clearing the compilation stage if it’s not a memory-safe program. In fact, the benefit of Rust is that it offers memory safety.

To allow memory safety concurrency, Rust uses type safety. The Rust compiler investigates each and every memory address you refer to and each variable you use. This feature of Rust will inform you about any undefined behavior and data races.

It makes certain that a programmer won’t experience a buffer overflow.

In contrast, Go gets completely automated during the run-time. Therefore, while writing codes, developers will not have to worry about removing memory.

Thus, Golang and Rust prioritize the memory safety feature, but on the basis of performance, there are possibilities of data races in Golang.

Development Speed

In some situations, development speed is more important than performance and program speed. Go’s directness and lucidity make it a language with a development speed. The Go language has a shorter compilation time and faster run-time.

Even though Go provides development speed and simplicity, it comes with several missing features that are important. To make the language easier, Google has removed many features that are available in other programming languages.

On the other hand, Rust comes with more characteristics than Go. Rust comes with more compilation time. 

Thus, if the project priority is the development speed Go is much better than Rust. If you are not much concerned about development speed and development cycle and want performance and memory safety, Rust is the best choice for you.

Developer Experience

Since the main motive behind the development of Go was simplicity and ease of use, most programmers see it as a “boring language” or a “straightforward language.” The limited features in Go make it very easy to learn and perform. 

On the contrary, Rust comes with high memory safety features that make the codes more complex and the programmers less productive. The concept of ownership makes the Rust language an undesirable option for many.

The learning graph for Rust is way steeper than Go. However, it’s also worth considering that Golang has a steeper learning curve as compared to the Python and JavaScript languages.

Rust vs Go: Common Things

In Go vs Rust, there are lots of common things between them. Golang and Rust are modern programming languages and are used by lots of young developers. Golang and Rust are compiled languages, open-source, and are collateral computing environments that are micro-service oriented.

Plus, both of them are easy to understand if you already have knowledge of C++.

Rust vs Go: The Final Breakdown

When Should I Use Golang?

The Go language can be utilized for a variety of different projects. According to a report, the use cases for Go are in web development, databases, and network programming. Most Golang developers claim that Go has a bond for networking services because of its concurrency.

More than that, Go is awarded as a top-ranking language for backend web development. The Go language also provides support for the Google Cloud Platform. Hence, Go does expendable performance with high-performing cloud applications.

Companies That Use Go

Although Rust vs Go can not be resolved on the basis of popularity, knowing why major enterprises are using Golang can help you reach a better conclusion.

So, the companies that clearly understand the Go language potential are:

• Google
• Twitch
• Soundcloud

When Should I Use Rust?

Rust is a computer programming language you can apply almost everywhere. But still, some places are better suited than others. Because of its high-quality performance, system programming is one such domain where Rust shines.

System programmers are basically software engineers that work on the hardware side of development. Rust is commonly used to design operating systems or computer applications as they are capable of handling the complexity of managing memory on the hardware side.

Although there is always some demur inside the developer community about what is a middle-level language. Rust is seen as a modern language with machine-oriented possibilities.

Companies That Use Rust

Even though Go is supported by several big companies, Go vs Rust can not be just a comparison without mentioning the same for Rust. Here are some companies that use Rust currently:

• Firefox
• Yelp
• Dropbox

Rust vs Go: Final Takeaway

Since the languages, Golang and Rust, originated at a very similar time, they are regarded as each other’s competitors. The development of Go is faster than Rust. Both languages share a quite good amount of similarities. 

The difference between the languages Golang and Rust is that Go is simple and Rust is complex. However, their functions and priorities differ in various meaningful ways.

In my opinion, Go vs Rust has produced a tie, meaning it all depends on the type of project and what’s best for your business. At Extern Labs, we analyze the requirements of the project then we decide which to use for that specific project.

At the end of the day, you have to decide which language is good for you and which is not.