Rust: The Future of Systems Programming?
Tags: rust, systems, c, cpp
Published: 2023-09-21 17:04:55

Rust is a statically compiled, strongly typed, Multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language that is designed to build low-level memory-safe applications. Rust introduces a borrower-checker rule for handling memory management. Rust was first announced in 2010 and it was released in 2015. Since then it has quickly gained popularity, and this is because Rust is designed to be performant Rust is one of the fastest programming languages available, and can often compete with C and C++ in terms of performance.
Rust is also designed with Safety in mind. Rust's borrow checker eliminates many common memory leaks, making it a very safe language to use. Rust has an in-built concurrency model, which makes it easy to write safe and efficient concurrent code.

Rust was initially developed by Graydon Hoare while he was at Mozilla. It started as a side project he was working on however Mozilla officially sponsored the project in 2009. Since its first stable release in May 2015, Rust has been adopted by companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. In 2022, Rust became the first language other than C and assembly to be supported in the development of the Linux kernel! Now this is a statement about how good Rust is and just how usable it is. Rust is designed to be robust enough for low-level systems programming. However, it is also compact enough to enable you to build applications like Web Servers.

In today's post, we will explore 6 main reasons why Rust has found solace with developers and why it continues to be the most loved programming language, here are the main talking points.

• Memory-Management.
• Usability and practicality.
• Performance 
• Safety 
• Type System 
• Interface with C and C++

## Memory-Management

Arguably the most important feature that sets Rust's head and shoulders high above its contemporaries is it's unique memory management style. Rust pioneered the concept of "Ownership and Borrowing" when it comes to dealing with memory management. How does this work?

Rust is designed to be highly efficient at dealing with memory management and as such it does not include a garbage collector. Rust implements a system of rules that govern how data is allocated to memory in your application. This relieves you of the need to manually free up the memory used in your application. In Rust, the compiler will automatically free up used memory once its `Owner` goes out of scope. This implies that all memory used in Rust applications must have an owner. Rust also ensures that each bit of memory can only have one owner at a time. These three statements form the foundation of how Rust manages memory and it allows developers to focus on building their application as opposed to 'fixing memory leaks'.

## Usability and Practicality

Although Rust is designed to be highly efficient at system level programming, specifically for apps like operating systems, and databases. Rust is also practical enough to be used for building simple web servers if that's what you want. Most of the programming languages targetting this space are practically unusable for most everyday programming tasks.

The ownership system is a key feature of Rust, but it can be tricky to understand at first. Additionally, Rust's syntax is quite different from other popular languages, Rust avoids this usability pitfall by ensuring that it is very straightforward to build simple and lightweight applications without much complication. This is a huge benefit because you can build highly performant web servers with Rust due to its speed and efficiency. This is also one of the main reasons most teams make the switch to Rust. The Rust compiler itself is written in Rust!

##  Performance

Performance is a must-have for any systems programming language and Rust is no different. The memory management of Rust has zero net effect on performance allowing Rust to reach breakneck speed. Rust has considerable performance compared to C and C++ and goes from toe to toe with Go and Zig. You can check the benchmarks at [The computer Language Benchmarks Game](https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/rust-gpp.html. 

Rust has two built-in compilation modes, "safe" and "unsafe". The "safe" mode is the default mode in which the compiler will build your executable. The "unsafe" mode allows you to be responsible for all memory management. Most compiler checks will be skipped. This mode is not inherently faster than the default mode and may even perform a little bit worse due to inconsistencies with memory management. 

Rust also uses Static dispatch and inline expansion to improve the performance of code. Static dispatch is used to determine which function to call at compile time. This is in contrast to dynamic dispatch, which is used to determine which function to call at runtime. Static dispatch is more efficient than dynamic dispatch because the compiler can eliminate the overhead of having to check the type of the object at runtime. 

Inline expansion is used to copy the code of a function into the code of the caller. This can improve performance by eliminating the overhead of having to call a function.

Rust uses static dispatch and inline expansion to eliminate method calls and function calls. This means that when you call a method or function on a value, the compiler will often be able to determine which code to execute at compile time. This can lead to significant performance improvements.

## Safety 

Rust is a systems programming language that is designed to be both fast and safe. This is achieved by using several safety features, including:

*Ownership: Rust's ownership system ensures that memory is managed efficiently and without leaks. Ownership is a set of rules that govern how memory is allocated and freed and they are enforced by the compiler.  You can also share data between variables without giving up ownership. This is useful for implementing algorithms that need to access the same data from multiple places.

* Type system: Rust's type system is very expressive and can be used to catch many common programming errors, such as type mismatches and null pointer dereferences.

*Compile-time checks: Rust's compiler performs several checks at compile time to catch potential errors. This can help you to find and fix bugs early on before they cause problems in your production code.

## Rusts Type System 

Rust is a statically typed programming language and as such type checking is performed by the Rust compiler at runtime, this allows you to build type-safe applications with Rust. Rust's type system is very expressive. It allows you to define custom types, generics, and traits. Rust supports generics, which allow you to write code that can be used with different types of data. Rust's compiler can infer the types of variables and expressions, which makes your code more concise and readable.

Rust's type system can help to make your code more reliable by catching many common programming errors at compile time. Rust's type system can also make your code more concise by allowing you to define custom types and by using type inference. Rust's type system also prevents null pointer dereferences by requiring you to explicitly check for null values before dereferencing pointers.

## Interface with C and C++

Rust has a foreign function interface (FFI) that allows it to call code written in other languages, such as C and C++.  Rust can be used to call existing C and C++ libraries, such as the libc library and the Boost libraries. This can be useful for interfacing with existing C and C++ code, so you can easily port your application to Rust. Rust can also be used to write code that needs to be used in other languages, such as C and C++.  Rust can also be used to improve the performance of C and C++ code. Rust's ownership system can help to prevent memory leaks and other common errors.

Let me know what your thoughts are on Rust, what was your experience with Rust like? Do you think that will eventually replace languages like C, or C++? Hope you found this useful, I will see you in the next one.