[Avg. reading time: 3 minutes]
Core idea
Rust is chosen when performance, memory safety, and concurrency all matter at the same time.
Systems and Infrastructure
- Operating systems and device drivers
- Embedded and bare-metal programming
- Cloud infrastructure tools and CLIs
Backend and Distributed Systems
- High-performance backend services
- Distributed databases and systems
- Networking and async services
Performance-Critical Applications
- Audio processing and DSP
- Computer graphics and game engines
- Simulations, HPC, scientific computing
Security-Sensitive Software
- Security tools and sandboxes
- Cryptography and secure runtimes
- Safe replacements for C and C++ components
Data and Machine Learning (Emerging)
- Data processing and analytics engines
- DataFrame libraries and query engines
- ML runtimes and system-level ML tooling
Frontend via WebAssembly
- Web application frontends using WebAssembly
- Shared logic across web, desktop, and mobile
- High-performance browser applications
Summarize
- Python when productivity matters more than speed
- C or C++ when speed matters more than safety
- Rust when you need both