Grease
“Grease” – a cartoon that illustrates how Rust has become the most popular developer language.
Launching version 1.0 in just 2015, Rust is a relatively new language that is harder to learn than many alternatives, yet has already 2.2M users.
While still small compared to Java (17M), Python (15M) or C/C++ (11M), according to Github it is the most popular the last eight years in a row.
The language has many champions, most recently Elon Musk who seems to believe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be written in Rust rather than Python, which is the most popular language for ML model building.
The Rust language has become popular for specific use cases (e.g. blockchain, financial services) where persistent performance is a premium.
Detractors believe it’s a niche language that core developers do not need and relative immaturity, for example Python has an extensive ecosystem and well-established libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch). Perhaps the reason for Musk’s surprising comments is that the next generation of Machine Learning is going to be running on vector databases to enable fast querying, which are better programmed in Rust.
One example of this is the decision by leading startup Pinecone to rewrite their vector database from Python and C++ to Rust since “ the pros around performance, memory management, and ease of use outweighed the cons of it not yet being a very established language,” remarked Jack Pertschuk, Engineering Manager at the company.
