[DeathArrow]

>I think comparisons between Rust and Go/C#/Java are what will really trip up a beginner. Rust has a lot of nice features found in higher level languages, but it's decidedly not a higher level language. Rust operates in the space of C and C++, where a small mistake can cause memory corruption no debugger will ever be able to unravel, but where a well placed byte of padding can accelerate a program by as much as 30 percent.

I agree. But if you use Rust for web programming, it is fair to compare it with C# or Java. On the other hand, C and C++ feels easier to read and write, a bit more productive than Rust.

So the question is vs C# and Java: is the performance worth the pain and loss of productivity?

And vs C and C++: is the guarantees made by Rust worth the pain and loss of productivity?

I'd argue that in some cases the answer can be yes, while in others it ca be no. So, there's no universal good or bad choice, it really depends on project, team, budget and many more.

[jeroenhd]

I don't know why you'd possibly want to use Rust for web programming, to be honest. When you add a full stack of databases and entities, Rust barely becomes faster than ASP.NET or Spring Boot. I messed with it for fun, but I don't think I'd pick Rust as a web server language any time soon.

The only reason I can think of is the WASM space, which Rust lends itself very well to, to reuse the same entities and data structures in the front end. Then again, you'll end up writing a terribly bloated web UI and other languages have similar bindings.

I think for new projects where C++ makes sense, Rust probably makes more sense. There are some edge cases (if you expect to be operating on trees in memory, for example, or if you're interfacing with libraries written in other languages) but I think Rust is generally better for such system tools. That assumes that you have in house Rust devs, of course; if you're a C++ shop, you'll have to teach everyone a new language before the switch makes sense.

The C(++) crowd is difficult to teach other languages because they, more than any dev group I've encountered, seem to have a larger amount of vocal people who think their code is perfect, they won't ever produce bugs, and all those compiler errors warning about failing edge cases are unnecessary because they know best.