Rust Is Asking For Developer Feedback

On the eve of its 10th anniversary, the Rust project is asking for feedback from developers to help guide where the programming language goes next.

Rust is a popular programming language, one of several newer languages that are memory-safe. As a result, applications written in Rust are less prone to many of the memory issues in other languages that can lead to performance and security issues.

Jack Huey, on behalf of the Rust Vision Doc Team, posted a survey and explained what the project is trying to ascertain.

Rust turns 10 this year. It’s a good time to step back and assess where we are at and to get aligned around where we should be going. Where is Rust succeeding at empowering everyone to build reliable, efficient software (as it says on our webpage)? Where are there opportunities to do better? To that end, we have taken on the goal of authoring a Rust Vision RFC, with the first milestone being to prepare a draft for review at the upcoming Rust All Hands.

Huey makes clear the project has two goals, as well as a non-goal, for what it hopes to accomplish.

The vision RFC has two goals

• to build a shared understanding of where we are and
• to identify where we should be going at a high-level.

The vision RFC also has a non-goal, which is to provide specific designs or feature recommendations. We’ll have plenty of time to write detailed RFCs for that. The vision RFC will instead focus more on higher-level recommendations and on understanding what people need and want from Rust in various domains.

We hope that by answering the above questions, we will then be able to evolve Rust with more confidence. It will also help Rust users (and would-be users) to understand what Rust is for and where it is going.

Rust’s user base is already passionate and dedicated, and the project demonstrating its willingness to listen to its base is only going to drive that dedication.

Rust’s Growing Popularity

Rust has been growing in popularity, with the language making its way into the Linux kernel, as well as low-level Android development. Google has credited the latter with a significant reduction in memory safety vulnerabilities within the mobile operating system.

Even the NSA has endorsed Rust, along with other memory safe languages, encouraging businesses and organizations to use it for more safe and secure application development.

“Using a memory safe language can help prevent programmers from introducing certain types of memory-related issues,” the NSA wrote in late 2022. “Memory is managed automatically as part of the computer language; it does not rely on the programmer adding code to implement memory protections. The language institutes automatic protections using a combination of compile time and runtime checks. These inherent language features protect the programmer from introducing memory management mistakes unintentionally. Examples of memory safe languages include C#, Go, Java, Ruby, Rust, and Swift.”

System76, the makers of Linux laptops and the Pop!_OS Linux distro, are using Rust to rebuild the COSMIC desktop environment from the ground up. Once completed, the Rust-based COSMIC will be one of the biggest, most complex and full-featured Rust projects.

To learn more, as well as participate in the survey, click here.

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