advanced programming languages

RUST 

Rust is a bit of an upstart among the other languages on this list, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable language to learn. Stack Overflow’s 2023 Developer's Survey found that Rust was the most loved programming language among developers for the eighth year in a row, with 80 percent of Rust developers saying that they want to continue working with it.

Developed by the Mozilla Corporation, Rust, like C and C++, is intended primarily for low-level systems programming. What Rust adds to the mix, however, is an emphasis on speed and security. Rust emphasizes writing “safe code” by preventing programs from accessing parts of memory that they shouldn’t, which can cause unexpected behavior and system crashes.

The advantages of Rust mean that other big tech companies, such as Dropbox and Coursera, are using it internally for operational purposes. While it may be a bit more difficult to master than other beginner languages, Rust programming skills are likely to pay off handsomely, as the language's popularity will only continue to rise in the near future.

High performance

Many programmers enjoy using Rust due to how fast it is. In fact, its speed is comparable with the C and C++ programming languages. There are many reasons why Rust is able to achieve high performance without sacrificing memory safety, such as its zero-cost abstractions, secure concurrency, and low-level control.

special about Rust language

Rust is a statically-typed programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency and memory management. Its syntax is similar to that of C++. It is an open-source project developed originally at Mozilla Research. In 2021, the Rust Foundation has taken the torch and is driving the development of the language.

Rust solves problems that C/C++ developers have been struggling with for a long time: memory errors and concurrent programming. This is seen as its main benefit. However, these are not the only examples of how Rust is different from C++. 

Of course, one can argue that modern C++ is putting greater emphasis on memory safety (e.g. by implementing smart pointers), but many problems remain unresolved. One of them is ‘use after free errors,’ which happen when a program continues to use a pointer after it has been freed, e.g. calling the lambda function after freeing its reference captured objects. 

In Rust, on the other hand, you have the borrow checker—the part of the compiler that ensures that references do not outlive the data to which they refer. This feature helps you eliminate memory violation bugs. Such problems are detected at the compile time, and garbage collection is unnecessary. 

Additionally, in Rust, each reference has a lifetime, where you can set the scope for which that reference is valid. This feature solves the problem with references that are no longer valid, and also distinguishes Rust from C and C++. 

The importance of correct memory management becomes immediately apparent when you realize that over the past 12 years around 70% of all security bugs in Microsoft products have been memory safety issues. The same number is also reported for Google Chrome.