What is Crypto Insurance?

Behind every blockchain project is a well-written and functional program. Every blockchain developer makes use of a certain programming language according to their preference or the type of project they are developing. In this article, we are going to take a look at the Rust Programming Language, a popular programming language that emphasizes speed and safety, amongst other key features.

What is Rust Programming Language?

Source: Official website

Rust is a computer programming language that was developed by Mozilla in 2010. It was developed to fix the issue of invalid memory access that developers faced while using C and C++ to build high-programming applications. With Rust, programmers can design and write computer programs that facilitate smooth integration of the software and hardware components of a computer.

The main purpose of Rust is enhanced safety, processing rate, concurrency, and ability to run multiple computations parallelly. Rust is generally used to develop advanced applications like game engines, operating systems, and browsers that demand scalability.

History of Rust

Rust started from a personal project started by Mozilla Research employee Graydon Hoare in 2006. In 2019, Mozilla, as part of their ongoing development of an experimental browser engine called Servo, decided to sponsor the project. The first functional version of the language was released in 2010 and has undergone several changes over the years to attain current popularity.

What Makes Rust Programming Language Unique

Rust is equipped with certain features that ensure the success of the language. These features make it easier for users to apply this language when writing the code for blockchain projects. Some of these features include:

Ownership System

Rust makes use of a strict ownership system, making sure every piece of data entered has a single owner and is deallocated automatically when no longer valuable. This feature ensures common sources of bugs, such as null pointer dereferencing, are eliminated.

Borrowing and Lifetimes

The language’s borrow checker enforces very strict rules for immutable and mutable references, ensuring common programming errors do not occur. Lifetime concept, on the other hand, helps stop the occurrence of dangling references. It achieves this by enforcing strict rules on how long the references stay valid.

Pattern Matching

Rust, with the help of its powerful pattern-matching mechanism, can facilitate concise and expressive code used to handle different data structures and manage flow. This feature allows developers to write concise and expressive code used to handle different cases, making codes more readable and maintainable.

Traits and Generics

Rust’s trait system allows code reuse through generic programming and trait-based polymorphism. Generics enable flexibility in writing code that can function with different data types, boosting code reusability and overall performance.

Concurrency

Rust’s concurrency model is based on ownership and traits. The model guarantees safe and efficient concurrent code without data races. This allows developers to write concurrent code with certainty, avoiding common pitfalls that come with parallel programming.

Cargo Package Manager

The language’s built-in package manager, Cargo, simplifies dependency management, building, testing, and documentation generation.

Rust Ecosystem

Rust goes beyond mere language specifications and compilers. It emphasizes several facets of building and maintaining high-quality production software. Also, the Rust programming language installer, rustup, allows users to install multiple concurrent toolchains easily.

Rust installations are equipped with Cargo, a command line tool that manages dependencies, runs tests, generates documentation, and so much more. The ecosystem also utilizes a community site for sharing and discovering Rust libraries called crates.io. Any library published on this site will have its documentation developed and released on docs.rs.

Rust has a lively, welcoming community with several official and unofficial meeting points for people to get help, like chats, user forums, Rust subreddit, Stack overflow questions and answers, and chatrooms. The ecosystem has a code of conduct that is enforced by a moderation team to ensure that the space feels welcoming and safe.

Projects Built Using Rust

Rust has shown itself to be a reliable language that emphasizes the speed and safety of the programs. The language’s features ensure that it is popular amongst developers, especially in the crypto industry. As such, numerous project developers have applied the language while building their projects, some of which include:

Polkadot

Polkadot is a blockchain platform that enables interoperability between several blockchains. It makes use of Substrate, a Rust-based framework used for building blockchains, giving room to a much more scalable and customizable blockchain application.

Solana

Solana is a blockchain platform that uses Rust to build its node software. It makes use of a Proof-of-History (PoH) consensus mechanism, which allows for high transaction throughput and low latency.

Elrond

Elrond is another project that makes use of Rust to develop its node software. It uses a unique consensus mechanism called Adaptive State Sharding, which facilitates high transaction throughput, and low latency, and maintains high-security levels.

NEAR Protocol

NEAR protocol is a decentralized application (dApp) that applies Rust to build its runtime and smart contracts. It is scalable, secure, and developer-friendly. The platform is focused on enabling the creation of other dApps for mass adoption.

Rust Applications and Use Cases

Rust programming language has a plethora of uses, from game development to web development. These use cases make use of Rust’s speed, simplicity, and safety to make programs that are secure and run smoothly. Below are a couple of ways users apply the Rust programming language:

Web Development

Rust is popular for its performance and safety, which is why several developers use it for web development. The Rust language is built to be bug-free and is capable of achieving better run time and lower latency. Developers also make use of the language due to the fact that it does not rely on garbage collectors, a memory management tool that affects performance time. Although it is not a household name for web development, it is slowly becoming as popular as JavaScript and Python.

Network Programming

Rust is ideal for network programming due to its memory safety and concurrency features. Rust offers developers who are into network applications the best of both speed and security. The language is equipped with the Tokio software library, which contains an array of tools developers can use to build secure, efficient, and scalable network applications. Rust can also be used for asynchronous networking, HTTP client and server development, and network protocol development.

Data Science Backend

Another major use for Rust programming language is building backend systems for data science. Rust’s security and performance speed make it a good fit for creating safe and speedy data analytics tools. Developers who implement Rust for data science will be able to implement performance-critical algorithms, build data processing pipelines, and develop web-based data visualization tools with great results.

Game Development

C# and C++ are currently the most popular programming languages used for gaming, but Rust is slowly climbing up the rank with its speedy runtime and efficiency, making it a good fit for building games via game engines like Piston and Amethyst Engine. Rust can be used in game development in a few ways, like building game engines, implementing game logic, and cross-platform development.

System Programming

The language has become a popular choice in the development of operating systems due to its impressive level of memory safety and, as such, has gotten the interest of several developers. System programmers who are impressed with the language’s backward compatibility and speedy runtime are making use of it to battle the cyber-attacks that are becoming more rampant.

Rust Vs. Solidity

Rust and Solidity are some of the most popular smart-contract programming languages in the crypto and web3 space. Both are useful to programmers who want to get into smart contract development.

Solidity is an object-focused, high-level, statically typed programming language that implements smart contracts on the Ethereum platform. The language is able to detect errors found during compilation, making it reliable. Christian Reitwiessner and a team of Ethereum developers for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain created it.

Rust and Solidity share some similarities, but a major difference is that Rust is not only limited to the crypto industry like Solidity is. It is also making waves in the financial world.

Similarities Between Rust and Solidity

When comparing these two popular programming languages, it is evident that they share certain characteristics while being different on different levels. Some of these similarities include:

• Multichain Compatibility: Solidity was built specifically for Ethereum; nonetheless, it also supports several sidechains, layer-2 blockchains, modular blockchains, and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible layer-one smart contract platforms.
• Turing-Complete: Turing-Complete languages are a type of language that can solve any computational issue, no matter how complex or difficult they might be. This feature makes both languages suitable for implementing smart contract logic.

Differences Between Rust and Solidity

These two popular programming languages possess similar qualities but are not the same; nonetheless, below are a few things that differentiate the two languages.

• Level of Language: Solidity is a high-level language, meaning it allows developers to build programs in a much simpler and user-friendly way. Solidity has high abstraction from the computer’s details, making the language easier to learn and use. Rust, on the other hand, is a low-level language that is the polar opposite of solidity. Low-level languages provide almost no abstraction from a computer’s architecture, making it similar to the processor’s instructions structurally.
• Programming Paradigms: Programming Paradigms refer to techniques and styles applied to solve a computational issue. Solidity’s approach is object-oriented. This means it implements objects and their related procedures within the context of programming to build software programs. Rust, on the other hand, is multiparadigm, meaning it utilizes different paradigms to solve computational problems. It essentially can support approaches that are object-oriented, imperative, functional, and many more.

Best Resources For Learning Rust Programming Language

If you want to have a deep-dive experience with Rust, there are a couple of online communities and forums where you can connect and learn from other Rust developers. To get started in learning Rust programming language, here are a few resources that help.

The Official Rust Docs

The official Rust documents offer three different resources for learning the Rust language. First on the list is The Rust Programming Language, also known as “the book,” which gives a thorough overview of Rust, leading new users through several projects to help them fully grasp the language.

The second resource is the Rustlings course, which helps users set up the Rust toolchain and introduces them to the basics of Rust syntax in a hands-on command line environment. Lastly, for users who prefer a more code-centric approach, the document has Rust by example. This represents a bank of code samples with different practical exercises to help users get a hands-on experience on how to use the language.

FreeCodeCamp

FreeCodeCamp’s course on Rust Programming Language is a good resource for those who wish to learn the language. By using Replit, you will work entirely on the browser of your choice using an interactive programming environment. FrreCodeCamp also provides a video version of the course on the YouTube channel.

To further boost your Rust skills, the course guides users through creating two projects: a command-line calculator and a tool that combines the pixels of two images.

Educative

Educative’s course called “Learn Rust from Scratch” offers users a more hands-on approach to mastering the programming language. It starts with the basic “Hello world” program and slowly introduces more advanced concepts like Arrays, Strings, Vectors, Enums, Structures, Traits, Generics, Functions, and Logic. It later advances into complex topics such as lifetime and memory management.

Once the user has gone through the basics and the advanced material, they will have a solid foundation in Rust basics and be ready to tackle harder concepts, making them more confident in developing Rust projects.

Conclusion

Different developers use different languages according to the project they wish to build or based on preference. Regardless, Rust has shown to be a reliable language, and continues to grow as a blockchain. In the future, we will see the language being utilized in many more ways and several other projects.