Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Rust VS Go Programming Language

Compare Rust VS Go Programming Language and see what are their differences

Rust logo Rust

A safe, concurrent, practical language

Go Programming Language logo Go Programming Language

Go, also called golang, is a programming language initially developed at Google in 2007 by Robert...
  • Rust Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09

We recommend LibHunt Rust for discovery and comparisons of trending Rust projects.

  • Go Programming Language Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-06

Rust features and specs

  • Memory Safety
    Rust’s ownership system guarantees memory safety without a garbage collector, preventing common bugs such as null pointer dereferencing, buffer overflows, and data races.
  • Performance
    Rust aims to provide memory safety while maintaining high performance. It is often as fast as C and C++ due to zero-cost abstractions.
  • Concurrency
    Rust's ownership and type system make it easier to write safe concurrent code, helping developers avoid concurrency issues.
  • Tooling
    Rust has excellent tooling, including the Cargo package manager and build system, and Rustfmt for code formatting.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Rust has a growing community and ecosystem, with active contributions and a wide range of libraries and frameworks available.
  • Strong Typing and Error Handling
    Rust’s type system and pattern matching compel developers to handle errors and edge cases, leading to more robust and predictable code.

Possible disadvantages of Rust

  • Learning Curve
    Rust’s advanced features such as its ownership system and lifetimes can be difficult for beginners to grasp, making it harder to learn compared to some other languages.
  • Compilation Time
    Rust can have longer compilation times, especially for large codebases, which can slow down the development process.
  • Ecosystem Maturity
    Although growing, Rust's ecosystem is not yet as mature as those of more established languages like JavaScript, Python, or even C++, leading to fewer available libraries and frameworks for certain tasks.
  • Complexity of Code
    The strictness of Rust's borrow checker can lead to more complex and verbose code as developers explicitly manage ownership and lifetimes.
  • Tool and Library Development
    Despite the rapid growth, some tools and libraries are still under development or lack the polish of their counterparts in more mature languages.

Go Programming Language features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Go's syntax is simple and consistent, making it easy to learn and use. This simplicity reduces the cognitive load on developers and leads to more readable and maintainable code.
  • Concurrency
    Go provides built-in support for concurrent programming with goroutines and channels, which are easier to use compared to threads and locks in many other languages. This makes it well-suited for developing concurrent and distributed systems.
  • Performance
    Go is a statically typed and compiled language, which allows it to deliver good performance that is competitive with languages like C and C++. The fast compilation times also improve developer productivity.
  • Standard Library
    Go comes with a rich standard library that includes packages for a wide range of applications, from web servers to cryptographic functions. This reduces the need to rely on third-party libraries.
  • Static Typing
    Static typing in Go helps catch errors at compile time rather than at runtime, leading to more robust and reliable code. It also makes the code easier to understand and maintain.
  • Cross-Platform Compilation
    Go supports cross-compilation, allowing developers to easily compile code for multiple operating systems from a single development machine. This is particularly useful for cloud and server applications.
  • Garbage Collection
    The built-in garbage collector helps manage memory automatically, which simplifies memory management and helps prevent memory leaks and other memory-related issues.
  • Strong Tooling
    Go comes with a suite of powerful development tools, including gofmt for code formatting, godoc for documentation, and race detector for detecting race conditions. These tools enhance development efficiency and code quality.

Possible disadvantages of Go Programming Language

  • Lack of Generics
    As of now, Go does not support generics, which means developers often have to write more boilerplate code and may encounter difficulties in writing reusable components.
  • Verbose Error Handling
    Go's error handling can be verbose and repetitive since it does not support exceptions. Developers have to check for and handle errors explicitly after every operation that can fail, leading to more boilerplate code.
  • Limited Standard GUI Library
    Go's standard library lacks built-in support for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). This makes it less suitable for desktop application development compared to languages that have robust GUI libraries.
  • Young Ecosystem
    Compared to more mature languages like Java or Python, Go has a relatively younger ecosystem. This means fewer third-party libraries and frameworks, which can limit the options available to developers.
  • Simplistic Type System
    While Go's simple type system makes it easy to learn, it can be restrictive for some tasks. The lack of advanced features like inheritance and generics can make certain types of code harder to write and less expressive.
  • Community Support
    The Go community, while growing, is still smaller compared to major programming languages like Python or JavaScript. This can make it harder to find community support, libraries, and developers with Go expertise.
  • No Tuples
    Go does not support tuples, which are useful for returning multiple values from functions and performing certain data manipulations more easily and expressively.
  • Dependency Management
    Although Go Modules have addressed some issues, dependency management in Go has historically been a pain point and can still be less intuitive compared to other ecosystems.

Rust videos

Rust Crash Course | Rustlang

More videos:

  • Review - Why You Should & Shouldn't Learn the Rust Programming Language
  • Review - All About Rust

Go Programming Language videos

No Go Programming Language videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Rust and Go Programming Language)
Programming Language
38 38%
62% 62
OOP
42 42%
58% 58
Generic Programming Language
Learning Resources
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Rust and Go Programming Language. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Rust and Go Programming Language

Rust Reviews

Top 5 Most Liked and Hated Programming Languages of 2022
A survey by Stack Overflow reveals that about 83.5% of 90000 developers loved Rust and tagged it to be the most adorable programming language. Rust is that general-purpose programming language that mainly caters to excellent performance and safety. This multi-worldview programming language has syntax similar to that of C++.
Top 10 Rust Alternatives
Several programming languages like Rust are among the popular ones. However, people are in search of some good alternatives to Rust. Therefore, today we will be talking more about the top 10 alternatives to Rust.
The 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn Today
Rust is a fairly advanced language, so you'll want to master another language or two before learning Rust. But you'll find that learning Rust pays off generously. The average salary for a Rust developer in the U.S. is $105,000 per year.
Source: ict.gov.ge

Go Programming Language Reviews

We have no reviews of Go Programming Language yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Go Programming Language should be more popular than Rust. It has been mentiond 322 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Rust mentions (48)

  • Useful Clippy lints
    Hello! Rust has very useful tool, named Cargo. It helps you compile code, run program, run tests and benches, format code using cargo fmt and lint it using clippy. In this post we'll talk abou Clippy. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Minimalist blog with Zola, AWS CDK, and Tailwind CSS - Part 1
    What are we going to do today? We're going to build a minimalist blog using Zola (built with Rust, btw), AWS CDK, Tailwind CSS, and a tiny bit of Typescript. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • This Tool can remove 98% Bloatware apps
    Effortlessly remove up to 98% of bloatware apps from your Android device without needing root access. Developed in Rust for efficiency and reliability. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • What Language Should I Choose?
    One language that really gave me that feeling was Gleam, it managed to wrap everything I liked about languages such as JS, Rust and even Java into one brilliant type-safe package. Not for a long time before I met Gleam had I wanted to try creating so many different things just to get to the bottom of how this language ticked, as it were. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Learning Rust: Enumerating Excellence
    Let's dive back into Rust! This time we're going to be going through the lesson called "Enums and Pattern Matching". We're going to be looking at inferring meaning with our data, how we can use match to execute different code depending on input and finally we'll have a look at if let. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

Go Programming Language mentions (322)

  • Building Event-Driven Go applications with Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Functions
    The Go programming language is a great fit for building serverless applications. Go applications can be easily compiled to a single, statically linked binary, making deployment simple and reducing external dependencies. They start up quickly, which is ideal for serverless environments where functions are frequently invoked from a cold start. Go applications also tend to use less memory compared to other languages,... - Source: dev.to / 7 days ago
  • The Beauty of Go, Introduction
    This series is about Go, a simple, yet powerful, language that has some unique features in its design. - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • Go for Node developers: creating an IDP from scratch - Set-up
    Nowadays, due to performance constraints a lot of companies are moving away from NodeJS to Go for their network and API stacks. This series is for developers interest in making the jump from Node.js to Go. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Testing SingleStore's MCP Server
    To use MCPHost, we'll need to install Go. For example, on an Apple Mac with Homebrew, this is as simple as:. - Source: dev.to / 25 days ago
  • Deploy HUGO website to Amazon S3 using Pulumi.
    A fast and flexible static site generator built with love by bep, spf13, and friends in Go. - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Rust and Go Programming Language, you can also consider the following products

Python - Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Java - A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible

C++ - Has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing the facilities for low level memory manipulation

JavaScript - Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

Crystal (programming language) - Programming language with Ruby-like syntax that compiles to efficient native code.

Haskell - An advanced purely-functional programming language