Je Rust budoucnost?

There’s been a lot of talk about Rust and its unbeatable performance, memory safety, and concurrency. Is this simply a high tide of popularity on the tech horizon as more and more programming languages are emerging or is Rust the programming language of the future?

Let’s see.

Table of Contents

• What Is the Rust Programming Language?
  • A Brief History of Rust
  • Rust Today
• Why Is Rust Popular: Rust Benefits
  • Concurrency Without Data Races
  • Memory Safety
  • Performance Without Compromising Safety
  • Noncommercial and Open Source
  • Easy Error Messages
  • Data Can be Borrowed
• What Drawbacks Does Rust Have?
• How SnapStack Is Using Rust To Create a Brighter Future for Companies
  • SnapStack’s Partnership With Honeywell
  • SnapStack’s Collaboration With Volkswagen (VW) Group
• The Future of Rust: Key Takeaways
• FAQs
  • 1. Is Rust a good programming language?
  • 2. What Rust language is used for?
  • 3. Is Rust used for AI?

What Is the Rust Programming Language?

Rust is a high-performance, statistically typed programming language created for both performance and safety. It runs fast, delivering top-notch efficiency while preventing a range of programming errors, most notably those regarding null and dangling pointers, buffer overflows, and any other type of accidental mutation due to a shared mutable state.

A Brief History of Rust

The inception of Rust dates back to 2006 when Mozilla employee Graydon Hoare started it as a personal project. The goal was one for the brave of heart only  — to create a programming language that could match the performance of C++ but without the memory safety issues associated with it. It wasn’t until 2009 that Mozilla began officially sponsoring the project.

Rust version 1.0 was launched globally on May 15, 2015, and was a significant milestone for the language. This version marked the end of long public alpha and beta testing and introduced stability without stagnation, meaning that future versions wouldn’t break compatibility. Since then, there has been a steady release of updates with backward compatibility, improving the language’s capabilities, performance, and safety.

Rust Today

Tech giants are already investing heavily in Rust, pointing to its potential. For starters:

• Google recently announced a $1 million grant to the Rust Foundation. This investment aims to improve the interoperability of Rust with C++ code, signifying a massive shift in the tech industry’s backbone. Chrome has even started shipping features written in Rust to bolster both security and performance.
• Android 12 started implementing Rust as a new language for platform code. This bold move is an indicator that Rust is anticipated to be a preferred choice for most new native projects in Android.
• Dropbox is using Rust for a number of its core file storage mechanisms, illustrating the language’s versatility and efficiency in resource management. The company has integrated Rust into various aspects of its file-syncing engine as well.
• Cloudflare has recognized Rust’s capabilities for its built-in WebAssembly support. Taking full advantage of this, Cloudflare hatched Pingora, an in-house HTTP proxy built on Rust, designed to manage over a trillion requests each day.
• Discord decided to turn away from Go in favor of Rust. By making the switch, Discord successfully mitigated latency spikes previously experienced with their read states service.

These Rust statistics speak volumes about the state of Rust today:

• For the eighth year in a row, Rust has been voted as the most desired programming language
• There are approximately 2.8 million Rust developers, almost three times more than in the last couple of years
• Rust compiled code runs at 95-98% of the speed of C++ and C
• 96% of Rust developers choose this programming language due to the possibility of building error and bug-free software, 92% for its high performance, and 89% because of its robust security features

Why Is Rust Popular: Rust Benefits

The Rust language’s popularity is not a result of good marketing. But why precisely is Rust grabbing the attention of developers right now? These are some of the reasons:

Concurrency Without Data Races

As a result, many threads in a process can operate concurrently without having to worry about which thread will access a variable first or if the value will change between the two threads’ accesses.

Memory Safety

Without the expensive overhead of a garbage collector, it may continue to be memory-safe. A value is immediately erased from memory after its owner is no longer in scope due to the rigorous constraints governing the lifespan of a value.

Performance Without Compromising Safety

Developers like not having to worry about safety and being free to develop aggressive code. Rust is one of the most effective programming languages available and can ensure memory safety.

Noncommercial and Open Source

There is no need to worry about the language introducing paid variants, which may result in unforeseen plan alterations on the road. Additionally, it enables a sizable team of engineers to contribute to the code and review the work of others.

Easy Error Messages

The build problems returned by the Rust compiler are fairly simple to comprehend and provide suggestions for potential changes. This can make learning Rust considerably simpler because it operates differently from many popular languages.

Data Can be Borrowed

Thanks to the borrow checker, Rust allows data to be borrowed — or temporarily used. This feature helps prevent common programming pitfalls like null pointer dereferencing and data races, eliminating a lot of the errors during compile-time rather than during execution.

What Drawbacks Does Rust Have?

Despite the numerous benefits, Rust is not without its share of drawbacks:

• Learning Rust’s ownership of values philosophy can take some time, especially if you’re comfortable using a language that doesn’t have it, like JavaScript or PHP.
• Numerous more changes are important to comprehend, such as the necessity to often use vectors rather than arrays to avoid mutability problems and the usage of macros rather than functions to accomplish common tasks.
• You will need to frequently implement your code in low-level languages for operations that are simple commands in higher-level languages. The use of macros created by other developers can help solve this to some extent. As a result, creating the finished code could take longer than creating it with a higher-level language.
• Rust’s sluggish compilation speed has been noted. According to several authors, this can be due to the way the code was written rather than a problem with the Rust language.
• Rust might be overkill for smaller, less complex projects. If you’re creating a simple web application or script, choosing Rust’s power might be excessive when simpler languages would suffice.

While the benefits generally outweigh the drawbacks for larger, mission-critical projects, these are considerations that each team or developer must make when deciding whether to use Rust.

How SnapStack Is Using Rust To Create a Brighter Future for Companies

Trying – and succeeding – to keep up with the latest technologies, the developers at SnapStack have helped numerous companies improve their efficiency with the help of Rust.

SnapStack’s Partnership With Honeywell

We partnered with Honeywell, a Fortune 100 company. Using our expertise — combined with Rust programming language capabilities — we redefined the delimitations of technology, achieving superior products and improved customer satisfaction rates. Thanks to our embedded technologies, Honeywell can now drive innovation effortlessly.

We couldn’t have made a better decision than to rely on Rust for the project at hand. The language’s focus on safety, especially around memory and threads, corresponded perfectly with Honeywell’s need for secure and performant solutions. This approach allowed us to create high-performing software with reduced memory footprints while mitigating security risks often associated with other systems’ programming languages.

No surprise that Honeywell was able to bring to market high-quality products, consistently. Their satisfied customer base is testimony to the fact of Rust’s proficient, reliable, and secure performance — and we are due to take some credit for it.

SnapStack’s Collaboration With Volkswagen (VW) Group

Faced with what seemed a mission impossible, Volkswagen reached out to us to help them develop infotainment software capable of controlling and improving various aspects of the VW Group’s vehicles.

From day one, we recognized the need for an embedded solution. The implications of this were massive, considering the level of complexity and interconnectivity. Modern vehicles rely heavily on integrated technology for practically everything — from controlling basic functions and executing complex operations to ensuring passenger comfort. In such an environment, the code has to be as robust, efficient, and secure as possible. At the core of our approach was a strategic decision to use Rust’s unique features efficiently.

In an infotainment system, several processes and tasks need to run simultaneously without conflict. Rust’s ownership model helped us manage memory access amongst various threads, preventing data races. This increased the overall system reliability, especially in situations where flawless real-time performance is crucial.

Moreover, Rust’s interoperability with C++ further solidified its position as the favored language for this project. This facilitated smoother integration of the newly developed Rust code into VW’s existing C++ codebases with minimal disruption.

Budoucnost Rust: Klíčové poznatky

Vzhledem ke všem výhodám, které Rust nabízí, se jeho popularita zvýší až v roce 2024. Rust přináší vysokou úroveň výkonu, kterou vývojáři začali očekávat při řešení problémů, které je trápí roky.

Budoucnost Rust, i když do značné míry ovlivněna přijetím technologického průmyslu a jeho škálovatelností ve velkých projektech, se jeví jako slibná. Od bytí zvýrazněno ve zprávách ONCD být podporován Výzkum kybernetické bezpečnosti NSA, Rust získává uznání jako legitimní uchazeč o titul „Programovací jazyk budoucnosti“.

Renomované společnosti již Rust přijímají a Meta nyní naléhá na své inženýry Dobře používejte jazyk k vytvoření vysoce výkonných backendových služeb. Volvo se také dívá na „softwarově definované automobily“ jako na způsob, jak přizpůsobit, rozlišit a vylepšit vozidla a Rust bude významným faktorem jeho vývoje.

Očekává se, že se Rust zařadí mezi nejpoužívanější a nejoblíbenější programovací jazyky v nadcházejících letech, protože programátoři i velké technologické společnosti začnou být svědky jeho potenciálu.

To vyvolává otázku:

Je Rust budoucnost?

A odpověď, kterou jste viděli přicházet: Ano.

FAQs

1. Je Rust dobrý programovací jazyk?

Rust je vynikající programovací jazyk z mnoha důvodů. Je proslulý tím, že zajišťuje bezpečnost paměti bez nutnosti sběrače odpadků, díky čemuž je extrémně rychlý a efektivní. Ve spojení s pokročilým zpracováním souběžnosti a abstrakcemi s nulovými náklady se rychle stává oblíbeným ve vývojové komunitě.

2. K čemu se používá jazyk Rust?

Programovací jazyk Rust se většinou používá k vytváření systémového softwaru, herních enginů, souborových systémů, komponent prohlížeče a simulačních motorů pro virtuální realitu. Díky výhodám, jako je bezpečnost paměti bez sběru odpadu a jeho schopnost snadno zvládat souběžnost, je Rust preferován pro programování na úrovni systému, kde jsou zapojeny aplikace kritické pro bezpečnost.

Společnosti jako Dropbox a Coursera se obrátily na Rust pro jejich vysoce výkonnou implementaci systému. Kromě toho se Rust používá také pro aplikace ve vestavěných systémech, což zdůrazňuje všestrannost jazyka.

3. Používá se Rust pro AI?

Ano, Rust se stále více používá v projektech AI a ML. Zatímco Python byl tradičně oblíbeným jazykem pro AI díky svým rozsáhlým knihovnám a rámcům, efektivita výkonu a funkce bezpečnosti paměti Rust z něj činí atraktivní alternativu pro implementaci algoritmů a modelů AI.

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