Rust developers are worried the programming language may become too complex and that its popularity in the tech industry doesn’t quite meet expectations, according to new research.
The Rust Project surveyed 9,710 developers worldwide, with the US, Germany, China and the UK accounting for almost half of respondents. The vast majority - 93% - were Rust users and more than 80% of them use the coding language on at least a weekly basis.
The Rust Project’s survey findings showed growing support for Rust as a programming language choice.
A third (33%) said they used Rust for the majority of their programming at work, and 28% said they used it occasionally. In terms of why they used Rust, 86% said it was because of the ability to build ‘relatively correct and bug-free software’- up from 82% last year.
The second most popular reason was Rust’s particular performance characteristics – speed, memory and footprint – which 83% of developers specifically highlighted as a major draw.
Rust developers fawn over the language’s security advantages
Rust’s security and safety properties were important to 70%, while a similar proportion also said it was ‘enjoyable or fun’ to program in Rust.
Nearly four out of five respondents (79%) said the programming language helped their company achieve its goals – a jump from 71% last time around, while 77% of respondents said their organization is likely to use Rust again in the future.
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However, 8% said that adopting Rust had slowed the team down. In terms of usage, Rust is popular for creating server backends, web and networking services, and cloud technologies.
Rust is a difficult programming language to learn
However, the survey did identify less positive feedback. Of the survey respondents who did not use Rust, 31% said it was because it was ‘too difficult’ to learn or that it would take too long.
Of the former Rust users who participated in the 2023 survey, 24% cited difficulty as the primary reason for giving up - although this does mark a drop from 30% last year.
When asked ‘what are your biggest worries for the future of Rust?’ the majority (43%) were worried about Rust becoming too complex at 43% — up from 37% in 2022.
Meanwhile 42% of respondents were concerned about a low level of Rust usage in the tech industry and 32% of respondents in 2023 were worried about Rust developers and maintainers not being properly supported.
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There was also a big drop in respondents who were not at all concerned about the future of Rust – down to 18% in 2023 from 30% in 2022.
When asked what features that Rust users want to be implemented or improved, 20% of respondents said that they wanted Rust to slow down the development of new features, which the report said “likely goes hand in hand with the previously mentioned worry that Rust becomes too complex”.
James Governor, co-founder developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk, said that frameworks can address increasing complexity in programming languages, and that with more complexity comes more utility.
When it comes to Rust, he told ITPro that usage is “steadily increasing”, pointing toward some notable wins at hyperscalers and cloud companies with regard to adoption.
Rust is particularly common in new infrastructure projects, Governor added.
“Rust is not crossing over yet as a general-purpose programming language, as Python did when it overtook Java, but it's seeing steady growth in adoption, which we expect to continue. It seems like a sustainable success story at this point.”
Rust is growing in popularity, but it still has some way to go
The research on Rust’s growing popularity as a programming language aligns closely with similar analysis from Stack Overflow’s 2023 developer survey. The study found that Rust was among the most admired languages, with more than 80% of developers who use it seeking to expand its use.
But it’s not the most common, ranking only 14th on the list of most used and most lucrative coding languages.
Rust sits in 18th place on Tiobe’s ranking of the most popular programming languages.
The programming language is less than a decade old but has grown rapidly; the Linux kernel now supports Rust, for example, and Microsoft is also rewriting some of the Windows kernel in Rust, too.
Rust developers are worried the programming language may become too complex and that its popularity in the tech industry doesn't quite meet expectations, according to new research. The Rust Project surveyed 9,710 developers worldwide, with the US, Germany, China and the UK accounting for almost half of respondents.
Growing popularity of Rust development services in numbers
SlashData has identified Rust as the fastest-growing language community. Rust also moved from 14th to 12th place in SlashData's ranking of programming languages in just six months.
All things together, Rust insists that your program will be correct or it won't compile. Strict typing makes you think about the relations in your program. It checks that you don't get data races. It will tell you if you try to free some memory too soon.
Rust is not a memory safe language, and does not embody safety practices. There's a lot of work to be done, a lot of the world to be fixed, and I could do away with the noise they make to mask the lack of work.
As a result, it can take longer to write C++ code. However, while it might be quicker to write Rust programs than C++ programs, this only applies to skilled developers. Both Rust and C++ are complex languages with a high learning curve.
According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Rust ranks as the most loved programming language for the eighth consecutive year. Rust is One of the Fastest Growing Programming Languages, According to The IEEE Spectrum Development report by Tiobe Co.
When comparing, Rust performance vs C++ is often cited as being faster because of its unique components. More often than not, their speed depends on the program being developed, the compiler, and the quality of the code. Thus, if your product written in C++ performs badly, poor code may be the culprit.
No, Rust is not a failed programming language. In fact, Rust has gained popularity in recent years due to its performance, memory safety, and concurrency features. It has been adopted by several major companies and is used in various projects, including operating systems, web browsers, game engines, and more.
In general, Python provides a simpler development experience and is easier to get started with. When comparing Rust or Python, it is evident that Python is more beginner-friendly due to its simpler syntax and abundant resources.
Switching to a more modern topic, the introduction of the Rust language into Linux, Torvalds is disappointed that its adoption isn't going faster. "I was expecting updates to be faster, but part of the problem is that old-time kernel developers are used to C and don't know Rust.
Flexibility Python is applicable in many areas of technology. It supports several domains, like web development, machine learning, etc., with many libraries. While Rust is great for system programming, it offers less flexibility than Python.
Yes.The hype is over and it is used in production without any further dramas. Some Windows system libraries are being rewritten in Rust. Kernel modules written in Rust allow Linux to run on Apple M2 processors.
Not likely. It will at best become another tool in a programmers toolbox. But languages generally aren't replaced. Just because you have Rust doesn't mean anyone is going to rewrite the potentially hundreds of billions of lines of C++ out in the wild, to say nothing of standard C and such.
Most of what makes Rust relatively hard is that the compiler is less forgiving of errors than other programming languages, so that a program that Rust accepts is more likely to be correct than a program that simply compiles/runs written in another language.
Rust gives you the choice of storing data on the stack or on the heap and determines at compile time when memory is no longer needed and can be cleaned up. This allows efficient usage of memory as well as more performant memory access.
Rust peak concurrent player number on Steam 2019-2024
Rust was first released in early access in December 2013 and built a significant player base until its full release in February 2018. In July 2024, Rust had more than 173,651 peak concurrent players on Steam.
Restricting programmers of what they can or cannot use, Rust doesn't have decent inheritance and exceptions, making it simple yet interfering with the availability of programming paradigms among the programmers. No doubt, Rust's popularity started declining from the year 2018.
Rust also has some plus points when it comes to building ML and AI applications that deal with complex data structures or do efficient memory management. In the Future There Will Be More Libraries And Toolkits Utilized For Rust That Are Intended For Scientific Computation Or Deep Learning Computation.
According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022, Rust is the most beloved programming language, and it has consecutively held this title since 2016. But why is that? There are many reasons for Rust's popularity, but it is primarily the language's features that made it beloved among developers.
Introduction: My name is Gregorio Kreiger, I am a tender, brainy, enthusiastic, combative, agreeable, gentle, gentle person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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