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Rust Isn't New. Why Is It Suddenly So Popular?Rust Isn't New. Why Is It Suddenly So Popular?
Rust's surge in popularity isn't just about security — it's also driven by developer fatigue with traditional languages like C and Java, as Rust offers a modern, efficient, and safer alternative.
4 Min Read
Alamy
Rust — the programming language prized for security and reliability — has been gaining momentum. This month, it ranks 13th on the TIOBE Index of most popular programming languages, up from 18th place a year ago.
That's a significant jump, and it begs the question: Why is Rust surging in popularity right now? The language is not actually all that new, so which factors explain why Rust seems to be having a moment in the mid-2020s?
To provide answers, here's perspective on what makes Rust so popular — not just in general, but at this particular moment.
A Brief Introduction to Rust
Rust is an open source programming language that emphasizes security and reliability. It does this through features such as:
Ownership transfer, which mitigates the risk of dangling pointers, a type of flaw that attackers can exploit to compromise applications.
Variable validation, which helps prevent oversights in the management of variable values that could trigger security vulnerabilities.
Ownership-based concurrency, a method for controlling interactions between threads during the execution of a program. Ownership-based concurrency helps prevent memory-related vulnerabilities.
Rust originated as a hobby project by a Mozilla developer in 2006. Mozilla began assigning engineers to work on Rust in 2009, and in 2012, the project issued its first public release.
Since then, Rust has gradually grown in popularity, creeping closer to breaking into the top 10 programming languages. And while the TIOBE Index's methodology for tracking programming language popularity is a bit opaque, TIOBE is not the only organization that thinks Rust is on the rise. Stack Overflow found in 2023 that Rust was the "most admired" programming language by developers.
What Makes Rust So Popular?
At a high level, it's easy to understand why Rust is generally popular or admired. Rust's main advantage is that it includes design features — like the special capabilities described above — that help developers avoid making the types of coding mistakes that can lead to severe software security or performance issues.
In this sense, Rust saves developers from themselves. You certainly don't need Rust if you want to write code that is free of flaws like dangling pointers, but Rust makes it easier to do so because Rust tries to catch these issues automatically. Most other programming languages leave it entirely up to developers to prevent or fix flaws like these.
Explaining Rust's Soaring Popularity
That said, Rust has been around for well over a decade, and it's always had built-in security and reliability protections that most other languages lack. Yet it's only now that the language seems to be gaining a critical following.
So, the more interesting question to ask about Rust is not what Rust's advantages are compared to other programming languages, but why increasing numbers of developers say they admire Rust right now. In other words, why did it take more than a decade for Rust to become truly popular?
The tempting answer is that although companies are investing more and more dollars in cybersecurity defenses (as ITPro Today's 2024 Priorities Survey found), the state of cybersecurity remains disastrous. Each year sets new records for the frequency and cost of cyberattacks. Against this backdrop, it seems unsurprising that developers would increasingly admire a language that promises to give them a leg up when it comes to building secure apps.
That said, I'm not sure that the ongoing cybersecurity crisis explains Rust's rise. Cybersecurity has been a struggle for years, even before developers began reporting high rates of admiration for Rust.
Plus, Rust isn't actually effective in addressing many of today's most pressing cybersecurity challenges — such as software supply chain security attacks or misconfigurations in the cloud. Those issues involve code written by third parties or configuration code, so choosing to write your own applications using a security-conscious language like Rust won't do much to mitigate them.
I suspect that Rust's popularity at present probably has as much to do with growing dissatisfaction with more traditional languages as it does with the notion that Rust is primed to help businesses solve all of their security problems. Developers are growing tired of the messiness of coding in C, the verbosity and the slow performance of Java, and JavaScript's lack of versatility. Rust offers a cleaner, saner, more modern alternative.
It's important to note, too, that just because Rust is popular doesn't mean it's actually in widespread use. Many developers may say they "admire" Rust or even wish they used it when in reality, they rely on other languages. It's possible that if Rust gained greater adoption, it would actually recede in popularity because some software engineers may discover that Rust is more challenging to use than they anticipated.
The bottom line: Rust certainly offers some standout advantages in the realm of security and performance. But I don't think those are the main factors behind Rust's growing ranks of admirers. The desire for a more modern, less clumsy language is probably a more important force.
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