Rust
Systems· alive, actively evolving· since 2010 · Graydon Hoare · Rust Foundation
Memory-safe systems programming without a garbage collector.
Draft from 2026-10-30, not yet checked claim by claim against its sources. Help verify it.
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.
What it trades away
Cost: Slow compiles and a learning curve measured in weeks, because the borrow checker refuses programs that other languages accept.
Where it fits
| Slot | Fit | |
|---|---|---|
| systems | ●●● | |
| server | ●●● | |
| cli | ●●● | |
| wasm | ●●● | The most used language for WebAssembly outside the browser. |
| embedded | ●●● | |
| games | ●●○ | Engines exist (Bevy), studios still ship C++. |
| data | ●●○ | Mostly as the fast core under Python tools (Polars, Ruff). |
| mobile | ●○○ | |
| browser | ○○○ | Only through WebAssembly, not as a browser language. |
Same API, same server, every language, in the arjaythedev benchmarks (2026-10-29): 264,000 users held on 1 vCPU / 2 GB, 130,000 on 8 vCPU / 16 GB with Postgres. GPU: via-libraries.
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). 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).
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).
Where it won
Rust won exactly where C and C++ were causing pain. Firefox shipped its CSS engine in Rust in 2017 (Mozilla Hacks). 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). The Linux kernel accepted it as its second language in version 6.1 (LWN). 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).
Named wins
- Linux kernel accepted Rust as a second language in 6.1 source
- Android, where new native code in Rust cut memory-safety bugs source
- Firefox Quantum shipped the Stylo CSS engine written in Rust source
- AWS Firecracker, the microVM behind Lambda and Fargate source
- Cloudflare replaced NGINX with Pingora, serving over a trillion requests a day source
Evolution
Reacts to: C++, cyclone, ocaml, Haskell, erlang
Weigh it against: Zig, C++, Go, C
Timeline
- 2006Graydon Hoare begins Rust as a side project source
- 2009Mozilla starts sponsoring the project source
- 2010Rust announced publicly at the Mozilla Annual Summit source
- 2015Rust 1.0 with the stability promise source
- 2017Firefox 57 ships Stylo, the first large Rust component in a mass-market product source
- 2021Rust Foundation founded by AWS, Google, Huawei, Microsoft and Mozilla source
- 2022Linux 6.1 merges initial Rust support source
- 2024The White House ONCD report urges moving to memory-safe languages and names Rust source
Links
website · repo · wikipedia · docs · PLDB
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)
Unverified draft, 2026-10-30.Edit the facts · edit the story · JSON · Markdown