Rust vs Go: Which programming language is best for 2021?

In the past decade, many programming languages have emerged, selecting the best suitable programming language for your application in this dynamic environment is a crucial decision to make. Developers need to use the most reliable language for the development of the application.

Rust vs Go, are the two primary and most used languages for enterprise development.

Both the languages include characteristics that are essential for modern software development, say integrated and sophisticated toolchain, memory safety, an open-source development model, and vibrant user communities.

Rust and Golang might seem similar but they have their significant differences.

The decision to select one among these two languages depends on whether you want execution speed or developer speed, simple concurrency, or memory safety. 

Go is primarily intended for creating scalable online APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) as well as small services, on the other hand, Rust is primarily used to handle CPU-intensive tasks like performing algorithms and handling large amounts of data. 

With this, let us see compare the main difference between Rust vs Go.

What is Rust?

Rust is a secure, generic, concurrent, structured, and functional programming language. With the multi-paradigm model, Rust is fast and guarantee memory safety by using validate checker. It powers critical services and performance. With no crashes and no data races, the rust language works efficiently. 

For developers, we can syntactically use this as C++ language. 

Mozilla started the development of the Rust programming language but in 2006 it became Rust. Rust is used by companies like firefox, yelp, and dropbox.

Advantages of Rust

1. Rust provides predictable behavior of run time with exceptional speed. 
2. It is compatible with cross-platform and can easily be integrated with languages like C.
3. Rust provides access to the best syntax and rich patterns with special ownership features.
4. It runs on embedded devices and provides memory safety.
5. Rust codes can be reused. It is accomplished by using modules that can be accessed by other modules.

Disadvantages of Rust

1. There isn't a good garbage collection system in place.
2. Developers may take longer to learn and compile it.

What is Go? 

Google created Golang or Go, which is a compiled programming language. This programming language is an open-source development model, that makes it easy to build simple, effective, efficient, and reliable software. Go is clear, accurate, easy to write, and efficient. Go is created to help in the development of multicore and networked computers through concurrency processes, and has large codebases. It is stricter with variable declarations. 

For developers, when we talk about syntax Go language is the modern language for C. And Golang was announced by Google in November 2009. Go is used by companies like Google, twitch, and SoundCloud.

Advantages of Go

1. It is a simple and compiled programming language.
2. Go is versatile, flexible, and quite easy to read.
3. Go can easily be scalable and is time effective. 
4. In terms of memory safety, structural typing, and garbage collection.
5. Detects the unused variable easily and has tools for static analysis. 

Disadvantages of Go

1. Despite having a strong library section, it lacks a UI toolkit.
2. It has a problem with dependency management.
3. It's a high-level programming language with low-level capabilities.

RUST VS GO: Which programming language to choose?

We have already discussed, what Rust and Golang are individual programming languages. This is what statistics say but you decide who is the winner. Let's see the comparison between Rust vs Golang in the following parameters.

Performance

While comparing performance between Rust vs Go, both the languages hold their performance metrics in high regard. As new languages, they perform well, if not better than, those that came before them. 

Go was launched by Google as an easier-to-code and learn replacement to the language C. Go supports and makes use of go-routines, which allow you to execute functions as subprocesses. 

Despite these practical features and support for multicore CPUs, Rust beats Go. Algorithms and resource-intensive tasks are efficiently executed in Rust. Rust is blazing fast when comes to testing and running algorithms. Rust provides zero-cost runtime abstractions for memory processing and handling.

Memory Management

Memory safety is a priority in both Golang and Rust. Both the programming languages have a tight link between memory management and performance characteristics. 

Rust uses zero-cost abstractions and compile-time ownership methods for memory management. As a result, the great majority of memory management problems may be identified before a Rust application is released.

At compile time, Rust detects memory problems, whereas Go utilizes a garbage collector at runtime. Rather than relying on smart compiler optimizations, the Go compiler adds a short runtime to the finished executable to handle memory allocation and release.

While both systems have advantages and disadvantages, Rust's compiler optimizations often result in faster applications. Go's application code, on the other hand, is cleaner because the runtime takes care of memory management.

Speed and Ease of Development

In some cases, development speed is preferred over software speed or performance. Comparing Rust vs Golang for ease of development, because Golang specifications of readability, it's simple to pick up, and coding is easier to do. Because of its simplicity and directness, Go is a language with a quick development cycle. Go takes less time to build.

Many features available in other programming languages have been removed from Go to make it easier to use. While the Go provides speed and simplicity, it does so at the expense of several features that are removed by Google.

Thus, the clear winner is Golang to avoid complexity and code with utmost ease. Rust, on the other hand, is your best bet if you're less concerned with development speed and more concerned with execution speed and memory safety.

Concurrency

In backend applications, concurrency is a must. Some languages run in single-threaded settings, which means they use ingenious ways to simulate concurrency without actually attaining it. Both Rust and Go have attractive solutions for creating completely parallel programs, but Go wins out in terms of ease of use.

Go's concurrency paradigm, a web API development server of Go that is, goroutines allows you to perform each request as a separate process. Developers may distribute tasks over several CPU cores, making it an efficient language. This technique greatly improves efficiency.

In comparison, Rust only provides a native await/sync syntax to enable concurrency. As a result, while rust ensures memory safety, developers choose to Go for concurrency.

Features

Golang Specifications: 

• Go component that ensures good memory management is garbage collection. The absence of memory safety is one of the shortcomings of C that Go seeks to address.
• Goroutines are another well-known feature of Go.
• Go concurrency emphasizes the language's multithreading capabilities.
• Golang has binaries and package management.

Rust Specifications:

• Rust does not include garbage collection; instead, it relies on a borrow checker to ensure memory safety. The borrow checker ensures that data ownership rules are followed and that data races are avoided. 
• Error messages are yet another feature of Rust that helps programmers to create complex applications or software.
• Rust also has features like Move semantics and pattern matching.
• The zero-cost abstraction and data race avoidance features help to manage memory and enhance its performance.

Maintenance and Community

Both languages do everything they need to do to ensure the applications are functioning correctly and are maintained. To cut a long tale short, maintaining your codebase will be easier since Go code is simple and easy to grasp, whereas Rust has a complex codebase and more features to deal with it.

The communities to support open-source languages are usually rather large. Developer communities do matter in assisting beginners for a language in learning about its capabilities and how to use them effectively. On comparing, Rust vs Golang, both of them have strong communities. Although, some say the community of Rust is more robust than Go.

When to use Rust programming language?

Rust and Golang, both are best at what they serve. However, choose Rust over Go when, 

• Your primary priority is performance.
• You'd rather prefer to have a secure memory than be a simple one.
• Rather than threads, you desire fine-grained control while programming.
• The correctness at runtime is more important to you than the speed while compiling.
• You like programming written at the hardware level.

When to use Go programming language?

According to a past survey, Golang was preferred more over Rust. Here are the reasons to consider Go over Rust,

• You're more concerned with the code's dependability and simplicity.
• You require top-tier execution speed.
• To develop a code fast, you choose a simple syntax and uncomplicated code.
• You want a more versatile language that can handle huge online projects. 

Thus, both are new and intentionally made languages to make programming better. There is no winner, rather what fits the client's needs when it comes to comparison and choosing between Rust vs Go. 

Now you are one step closer to becoming a pro programmer. To know more check, which language is best for android app development: Kotlin or Java.

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