# Rust

> Memory-safe systems programming without a garbage collector.

- **Appeared:** 2010
- **Creators:** Graydon Hoare
- **Maintained by:** Rust Foundation
- **Type:** systems
- **Status:** alive
- **Born from:** Graydon Hoare started Rust as a personal project in 2006 after yet another memory-safety crash, this time in the elevator software of his apartment building. Mozilla picked it up in 2009 because Firefox was written in C++ and memory bugs in C++ were the main source of its security holes, while garbage-collected languages were too slow for a browser engine.
- **Reacts to:** cpp, cyclone, ocaml, haskell, erlang
- **Trade-offs:** ownership, checked at compile time; static types; compiles to native code; concurrency: threads, async. Cost: Slow compiles and a learning curve measured in weeks, because the borrow checker refuses programs that other languages accept.
- **Slots:** systems ●●● strong; server ●●● strong; cli ●●● strong; wasm ●●● strong (The most used language for WebAssembly outside the browser.); embedded ●●● strong; games ●●○ ok (Engines exist (Bevy), studios still ship C++.); data ●●○ ok (Mostly as the fast core under Python tools (Polars, Ruff).); mobile ●○○ weak; browser ○○○ none (Only through WebAssembly, not as a browser language.)
- **Alternatives:** zig, cpp, go, c
- **Won where:** Linux kernel accepted Rust as a second language in 6.1 [source](https://lwn.net/Articles/910762/); Android, where new native code in Rust cut memory-safety bugs [source](https://security.googleblog.com/2022/12/memory-safe-languages-in-android-13.html); Firefox Quantum shipped the Stylo CSS engine written in Rust [source](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how-firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/); AWS Firecracker, the microVM behind Lambda and Fargate [source](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/firecracker-lightweight-virtualization-for-serverless-computing/); Cloudflare replaced NGINX with Pingora, serving over a trillion requests a day [source](https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-built-pingora-the-proxy-that-connects-cloudflare-to-the-internet/)
- **Timeline:** 2006: Graydon Hoare begins Rust as a side project [source](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1067869/rust-worlds-fastest-growing-programming-language/); 2009: Mozilla starts sponsoring the project [source](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1067869/rust-worlds-fastest-growing-programming-language/); 2010: Rust announced publicly at the Mozilla Annual Summit [source](https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf); 2015: Rust 1.0 with the stability promise [source](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/05/15/Rust-1.0.html); 2017: Firefox 57 ships Stylo, the first large Rust component in a mass-market product [source](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how-firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/); 2021: Rust Foundation founded by AWS, Google, Huawei, Microsoft and Mozilla [source](https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/2021-02-08-hello-world/); 2022: Linux 6.1 merges initial Rust support [source](https://lwn.net/Articles/910762/); 2024: The White House ONCD report urges moving to memory-safe languages and names Rust [source](https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/)
- **Hardware:** gpu=via-libraries, twelve_dollar_users=264000, multicore_users=130000, source=https://github.com/arjaythedev/twelve-dollar-server-challenge/blob/main/LEADERBOARD.md, measured=2026-10-29
- **Links:** [website](https://www.rust-lang.org), [repo](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust), [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)), [docs](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)
- **PLDB:** https://pldb.io/concepts/rust.html
- **Sources:** https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1067869/rust-worlds-fastest-growing-programming-language/, https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/05/15/Rust-1.0.html, https://lwn.net/Articles/910762/, https://security.googleblog.com/2022/12/memory-safe-languages-in-android-13.html, https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)
- **Verified:** no, draft of 2026-10-30
- **Canonical:** https://langwhy.dev/lang/rust/

## Why it exists

In 2006 Graydon Hoare, then a Mozilla engineer, came home to a broken elevator. The cause was a memory bug in its control software, the kind of crash he had spent years chasing in C and C++. He started a language in which that class of bug would not compile ([MIT Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1067869/rust-worlds-fastest-growing-programming-language/)). Mozilla had the same problem at a larger scale: Firefox was millions of lines of C++, and memory-safety bugs were the main source of its security holes. Garbage-collected languages fixed that but were too slow and too unpredictable for a browser engine. Mozilla began sponsoring Rust in 2009 and announced it in 2010 ([Hoare's intro talk](https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf)).

## What it trades away

Rust gets memory safety without a garbage collector by making the compiler track who owns every value and for how long. That is the ownership and borrowing system, and it is the cost: the borrow checker rejects many programs that would be fine in C++, and learning to write code it accepts takes weeks, not days. Compile times are long because the compiler does so much checking. In return you get no null-pointer crashes, no data races and C-level speed, all guaranteed at compile time rather than tested for at run time ([Rust 1.0 announcement](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/05/15/Rust-1.0.html)).

## Where it won

Rust won exactly where C and C++ were causing pain. Firefox shipped its CSS engine in Rust in 2017 ([Mozilla Hacks](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how-firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/)). Google reported that as new Android native code moved to Rust, memory-safety vulnerabilities fell from 76 % to 35 % of the total ([Google Security Blog](https://security.googleblog.com/2022/12/memory-safe-languages-in-android-13.html)). The Linux kernel accepted it as its second language in version 6.1 ([LWN](https://lwn.net/Articles/910762/)). AWS built Firecracker, the microVM under Lambda, in Rust, and Cloudflare replaced NGINX with its own Rust proxy. In 2024 a White House report told the industry to move to memory-safe languages and named Rust ([ONCD](https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/)).

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Data: CC0, https://github.com/langwhy/langwhy/blob/main/data/languages/rust.yaml