Rust and Go in 2024
Which is better, Rust or Go? Which language should you choose for your next project and why? How do they compare in terms of performance, simplicity, security, features, scalability, and concurrency? What do they have in common and what are their fundamental differences? Let’s find the answer through a friendly and fair comparison of Rust and Go.
# 1. Rust and Go are both great
Firstly, it is very important to note that Go and Rust are both absolutely excellent programming languages. They are modern, powerful, widely adopted, and provide excellent performance.
Rust is a low-level statically typed multi-paradigm programming language that focuses on safety and performance - Gints Dreimanis [2]
However:
Go is an open-source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software golang.org [3]
In this article, I will try to briefly outline which scenarios I think Go is the ideal choice and which scenarios Rust may be a better choice.
# 2. Similarities
What is the common goal of the two languages?
# 2.1 Memory safety
Historically, one of the biggest causes of software errors and security bugs is unsafe or incorrect access to memory.
Rust and Go handle this problem in different ways, but both aim to be smarter and safer in managing memory than other languages.
# 2.2 Fast and compact executable files
They are all compile languages, which means your program will be directly compiled into executable machine code so that you can deploy the program as a single binary file. Compared with interpreted languages such as Python or Ruby, this also makes Rust and Go programs have extremely fast execution speed.
# 2.3 Common language
Rust and Go are both powerful and extensible general-purpose programming languages that you can use to develop various modern software. Both have excellent standard libraries and thriving third-party ecosystems, as well as strong commercial support and a large user base.
# 2.4 Pragmatic programming style
Although Go and Rust both have functional features related to functional and Object Oriented Programming (OOP), they are both pragmatic languages designed to solve problems in the most appropriate way.
# 2.5 Suitable for large-scale development
Rust and Go both have some useful features that make them suitable for large-scale programming, whether it is for large teams, large codebases, or both.
For example, both Rust and Go use standard code formatting tools (Go’s gofmt, Rust’s rustfmt), which puts an end to useless arguments about the placement of parentheses.
Both also have excellent built-in high-performance standard build and dependency management tools; no more struggling with complex third-party build systems or learning a new one every few years.
# 3. Differences
Although Rust and Go share many similarities, in some areas, rational people may prefer one language over the other to meet specific project needs.
# 3.1 Performance
Go and Rust are both very fast. However, Go’s design is more conducive to fast compilation, while Rust is optimized for fast execution.
Rust’s runtime performance is also more consistent because it does not use garbage collection mechanism. On the other hand, Go’s garbage collector reduces some of the burden on programmers, making it easier to focus on solving the main problems rather than memory management details.
For areas where execution speed outweighs all other considerations (such as game programming, operating system kernels, web browser components, and real-time control systems), Rust is a better choice.
# 3.2 Simple
From a design perspective, Go is a small language with very few syntax, keywords, and language structures. You can quickly learn the basics of Go and use the language to improve work efficiency.
This gives Go an advantage in projects with short time spans or teams that need to quickly introduce a large number of new programmers, especially when they are relatively inexperienced.
# 3.3 Functional features
On the other hand, Rust has almost all the features of programming languages you can imagine, as well as some features that you may not be able to imagine. This makes it a powerful and expressive language that can accomplish the same thing in multiple different ways.
If you’re transitioning to Rust from another language, you can probably find Rust equivalents for most of the features you’re used to. This gives Rust an advantage when large projects need to migrate from legacy languages like C++ or Java.
# 3.4 Concurrency
Unlike most languages, Go is designed with built-in support for concurrent programming, such as goroutines (a lightweight version of threads) and channels (a safe and efficient way to communicate data between concurrent tasks).
These make Go the perfect choice for large-scale concurrent applications such as network servers and microservices.
# 3.5 Security
Rust is carefully designed to ensure that programmers cannot do unsafe things they do not want to do, such as overwriting shared variables. The compiler requires you to specify the way data is shared between different parts of the program and can detect many common errors and bugs.
Therefore, the so-called “battle with borrow checkers” is a common complaint among new Rust programmers. Implementing programs with safe Rust code often means fundamentally rethinking their design, which can be frustrating, but when reliability is your top priority, the benefits of doing so are worth it.
# 3.6 Scale
Go aims to make it easy for you to expand projects and development teams. Its minimalist design brings a certain consistency, and the existence of a clearly defined standard style means that any Go programmer can read and understand new code libraries relatively quickly.
When it comes to large-scale software development, clarity is better than intelligence. For large organizations, especially many distributed teams, Go is a good choice. Its fast build time is also conducive to rapid testing and deployment.
# Step 4 Trade-offs
The design teams of Rust and Go made some very different choices, so let’s take a look at some areas where these trade-offs make these two languages very different from each other.
# 4.1 Garbage collection
Generally speaking, languages with garbage collection and automatic memory management functions (such as Go) can quickly and easily develop reliable and efficient programs, which is the most important for some people.
However, garbage collection, due to its performance overhead and stop-the-world pauses, can make program behavior unpredictable at runtime, and some people find this inconsistency unacceptable.
Programmers must clarify that the language responsible for allocating and releasing each byte of memory (such as Rust) is more suitable for real-time or ultra-high-performance applications.
# 4.2 Abstract
The history of computer programming is an increasingly complex and abstract story that allows programmers to solve problems without worrying too much about how the underlying machines actually work.
This makes the program easier to write and possibly more portable. However, for many programs, accessing hardware and precisely controlling the execution of the program is more important.
Rust’s goal is to make programmers “closer to metal” and have more control, while Go abstracts architectural details and brings programmers closer to problems.
# 4.3 Speed
Rust has made many design trade-offs to achieve the best execution speed. In contrast, Go cares more about simplicity and is willing to sacrifice some (runtime) performance for it.
At this point, whether you prefer Rust or Go depends on whether you are willing to spend more time waiting for the program to build or wait for the program to run.
# 4.4 Correctness
Go and Rust both aim to help you write correct programs, but in different ways: for example, Go provides an excellent built-in unit test framework and a rich standard library, while Rust focuses on eliminating runtime errors using its borrow checker mechanism.
To be fair, it is easier to write a given program in Go, but the result may contain errors more easily than the Rust version. Rust imposes disciplinary constraints on programmers, but Go lets programmers choose the level of discipline they want to apply to specific projects.
# 5. Conclusion
I hope this article can make you believe that both Rust and Go are worth considering seriously. You should reject the dilemma of this mistake: you can only learn one of them. In fact, the more languages you know, the higher your value as a software developer.
Every new language you learn will give you a new way of thinking, which can only be a good thing. The most important factor for the quality and success of any software project is not the choice of language, but the skills of the programmer.
When using the language that suits you best, you become most proficient and can enjoy the most programming pleasure. Therefore, if the question is “Should I learn Rust or Go?”, the only correct answer is “Yes”.
References
[1] 《Rust vs Go in 2024》: https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/rust-vs-go
[2] Gints Dreimanis: https://serokell.io/blog/rust-guide
Rust and Go in 2024
