Rust
Rust was created by Graydon Hoare in 2006, who was working at Mozilla by the time. It began as a personal project, driven by the desire to create a more secure and efficient language for system-level programming.
In 2009, Mozilla began sponsoring the project. The goal was to create a language that could power the next generation of web applications and services, particularly in performance-critical components of Firefox and its layout engine, Servo.
Rust drew inspiration from several existing languages. Its syntax has similarities to C++ but also incorporates features from languages like Erlang and Haskell, especially in terms of its approach to concurrency and memory safety.
In general terms
Rust brings to the table a unique blend of features, primarily focusing on performance, in a similar way to C++, but with modern language features that make development safer.
Safety
The key features that define safety in rust are:
- Ownership & Memory management
- Borrowing and references
- Lifetimes
- Error handling
Ownership & Memory management
Ownership is a set of rules that govern how a program manages memory. It refers to how different parts of the system’s memory are allocated and controlled.
Imagine having an assistant who periodically checks your desk, removing items you’re done with so your workspace remains uncluttered and efficient.
All programs have to manage the way they use a computer’s memory while running. Some languages have garbage collection that regularly looks for no longer-used memory as the program runs; in other languages, the programmer must explicitly allocate and free the memory.
Ownership in Rust:
Rust manages memory through a system of ownership with a set of rules that the compiler checks. If any of the rules are violated, the program won’t compile.
Ownership Rules:
- Each value in Rust has an owner.
- There can only be one owner at a time.
- When the owner goes out of scope, the value will be dropped.
Read More: Rust Ownership - Explained for Beginners
None of the features of ownership will slow down a Rust program while it’s running.
This ensures that Rust programs not only benefit from enhanced memory safety and efficiency but also maintain optimal runtime performance, as the ownership model imposes no runtime overhead.
Borrowing and References
Borrowing and references are fundamental concepts in Rust that work hand-in-hand with the ownership system to ensure memory safety and data race protection without the overhead of garbage collection.