Is Rust Better Than Go?

Which language should I choose for my next project - Rust or Go? How do these languages compare in terms of performance, features, scalability, concurrency, etc.? Are these questions bothering you? Let’s dive in to find out the answers to the questions bothering you.

Rust and Golang - A small intro

Rust

Rust was developed by Mozilla in 2010. It is popular for its performance, safety, and system-level programming. It is a good choice for applications that ask for high-performance and embedded systems because it achieves memory safety without garbage collection. Its unique feature is the ownership system. This feature enables developers to write secure and efficient codes by preventing programming errors like data races and null pointer differences.

Go

Go or Golang was developed by Google and was launched in 2009. It is popular for its simplicity, ease of use, and efficiency. It is a good choice for building scalable and concurrent systems. Its unique feature is its built-in support for concurrency. This feature simplifies concurrent programming for the developers. Moreover, its simple syntax makes it well-suited for microservices, cloud-native applications, and go web development.

Rust vs Go

Similarities

1. Both Rust and Go emphasize memory safety.
2. They have statically typed systems that detect type-related errors during compilation which is helpful to decrease runtime errors.
3. They are designed for concurrent programming and handle concurrency efficiently.
4. Both languages have strong ecosystems which consist of a wide variety of tools and extensive libraries.
5. Rust and Go are compiled and open-source languages.
6. Both languages produce efficient code.
7. You can easily write codes that run on multiple operating systems because they are designed to be cross-platform.
8. They prioritize performance and are suitable for performance-critical applications.

Differences

Rust and Go have a few similarities but they also have some significant differences. What are they?

1. Performance

Rust’s performance is excellent. It is designed for speed of execution. Moreover, it focuses on minimal runtime, low-level control, and memory management without a garbage collector. Rust gives the developers complete control of the underlying hardware. It is an excellent choice for applications that need speed of execution.

Golang is also a high-performing language. However, it is designed for speed of development and not execution. Its garbage collector is efficient and is designed to shorten the stop-the-world pauses as much as possible. It is an excellent choice for general-purpose applications and web services. It allows rapid development of applications.

2. Learning curve

Rust is sophisticated in a few concepts like borrowing and ownership. The language is difficult to understand and the learning curve is steep. Moreover, developers who are used to languages with garbage collectors may find it difficult to adapt to Rust’s memory management paradigm.

On the contrary, Go’s simplicity and readability make it easy to learn. It is easier to write codes with Go. Go is suitable for developers of all skill levels because of its straightforward approach.

3. Ecosystem and libraries

Rust has an extensive library that is growing steadily. Moreover, it boasts a robust package manager called cargo. Its libraries like Tokio for asynchronous I/O and Rocket for Web are gaining a lot of popularity. However, it is newer than Go. So, Go’s ecosystem and library are better.

Go has an expansive and vibrant ecosystem. Its library covers a wide range of tasks. The intensive library accelerates development and reduces the need for reinventing the wheel. Its package manager Go Get is gaining popularity as it is making it easy to acquire and manage dependencies.

4. Memory management

Rust uses a strict ownership model, a borrow checker, and a lifetime system to ensure memory safety without sacrificing performance.

Golang uses garbage collection to manage memory automatically. This reduces the risk of memory-related bugs.

5. Concurrency

Although both languages support concurrent programming, the concepts are different.

Rust uses the concept of ownership and the async/await pattern for asynchronous programming. This allows the developers to write concurrent codes.

Go uses Channels and Goroutines for concurrent and parallel programming. Golang allows the developers to manage a large number of Goroutines using a limited number of OS threads. So, you can run millions of concurrent Goroutines in a single program. Hence, Golang is always the smart choice for high-scale concurrent programs.

6. Safety

Both Rust and Go aim to prevent errors in different ways.

Rust has a compiler that checks every variable and memory in your program. Rust’s compiler checks are different from other languages making it a little difficult for programmers to work. However, it is worth the hard work because it detects all errors.

Go’s error checking is completely automated during the runtime. Moreover, Go has the ‘panic and recover’ mechanism to detect exceptional errors. It allows the developers to take appropriate action with logging or other ways.

7. Speed

Rust has more features and characteristics than Golang. So the compilation time is long.

On the other hand, Golang has removed many features to make the language easier. So, the compilation time is shorter than Rust. If development speed is the priority, then Golang is the best choice.

8. Features

Rust supports traits, generics, macros, and error handling. Moreover, it has a large ecosystem of crates.

Go has built-in support for various concurrency mechanisms such as Goroutines and Channels. It supports interfaces and has very good support for HTTP and other APIs as it is created by Google.

9. Use cases

Rust:

• Systems programming - It is an excellent choice for building operating systems, embedded systems, and low-level software.
• Rust is suitable for applications that require high performance such as game development and real-time applications.
• Rust gives importance to safety. So, it is well-suited for applications where security is crucial.

Golang:

• Its simplicity and built-in support for concurrency make it an excellent choice for building microservices, APIs, and web services.
• Golang is efficient and scalable. So, developers use it for developing cloud-native applications.
• It is also suitable for building DevOps tools and system utilities because of its ease of use and high performance.

Both languages have their strengths and are suitable for different projects. If you are sure Golang is the right choice for your project, hire remote Golang developers as they assure speed of development and cost-efficiency.