The Borrow Checker is Your Friend

I remember my first week with Rust. I was trying to write a simple linked list. I cried. I questioned my 15 years of experience. I thought about becoming a farmer.

Memory Safety without GC

Coming from Java and Go, the idea of manual memory management was scary. Coming from C++, the idea of safe manual memory management was a dream.

Rust promises memory safety without a garbage collector. It achieves this through Ownership and Borrowing.

fn main() {
    let s1 = String::from("hello");
    let s2 = s1; // s1 is moved to s2
    
    // println!("{}, world!", s1); // This would fail!
    println!("{}, world!", s2);
}

Why It Matters

In high-performance systems, predictable latency is key. Garbage collection pauses can kill a real-time trading bot or a game engine. Rust gives you the control of C++ with the safety of Java.

It’s a steep learning curve, but the view from the top is magnificent.