AWS is in love with RUST and you should be too!

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AWS is sponsoring the Rust programming language. And it is because it helps AWS write highly performant, safe infrastructure-level networking and other systems software. Why has Rust proved so popular at AWS? Let’s discuss this in our blog!

Rust has been voted Stack Overflow’s most-loved programming language for five years in a row. This blog explains why everyone loves RUST. We will discuss:

  • Companies that are using Rust
  • AWS loves Rust
  • Rust is the most popular programming language among developers
  • Why should you love Rust?
  • Download and install Rust for Windows
  • Write and run the HelloWorld program using Rust
  • Future of Rust

Companies that are using Rust

First created at Mozilla, it has since been adopted by many companies including Amazon, Dropbox, Coursera, Figma, npm, Microsoft, Cloudflare, Facebook, Discord, etc. Sentry, Airbrake, Ethereum, Google Code Prettify, and Deno are some of the popular tools that integrate with Rust. 

Companies that are using Rust

Why has Rust proved so popular at Amazon and elsewhere? Rust’s main advantage is, that it enables C-like performance and at the same time keeps the memory safety that we are getting from programming languages like JavaScript and Python. As more companies adopt this new language it is starting to look like it’s here to stay.

AWS Loves RUST

In this blog, we are going to discuss why AWS loves Rust. The reason why AWS loves Rust is, that it helps AWS write highly performant, safe infrastructure-level networking and other systems software. 

Firecracker, Amazon’s first notable product was launched publicly in 2018 and built with Rust and provides the open-source virtualization technology that powers AWS Lambda and other serverless offerings. Apart from this product, AWS uses Rust to deliver services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, and more. 

Recently Amazon launched Bottlerocket, a Linux-based container operating system written in Rust. The Amazon EC2 team uses Rust as the language of choice for new AWS Nitro System components, including sensitive applications such as Nitro Enclaves.

Rust is the most popular programming language among developers!

Rust has been voted Stack Overflow’s most-loved programming language for five years in a row, citing:

“Rust continues to be the most loved programming language because it solves pain points present in many other languages, providing a solid step forward with a limited number of downsides”

Based on the 2020 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Rust is the most loved programming language again at 86.1%.

AWS Loves RUST

Source: StackOverflow 2020 Survey

Developers love Rust because it combines ease of programming with access to core system configurations. Rust is built with memory safety, concurrency, and security from the ground up.

Rust is also considered to be a great alternative to C++ because it offers high performance and helps developers eliminate common bugs caused by languages like C++.

In August 2020, Rust was in the top 20 of the Tiobe index, with a strong chance to take over MATLAB, Objective-C, Groovy, and possibly even Ruby. 

Why should you love Rust?

AWS is sponsoring the development of the Rust project and using Rust as a programming language in many of its services. 

“Rust is a critical component of our long-term strategy and we’re investing to deliver Rust engineering at Amazon scale. That includes developer tools, infrastructure components, interoperability, and verification,” 

Amazon has recently announced its intention to hire more software engineers who know Rust programming language to support the open-source community behind the young language, which has become popular for systems programming. 

There are plenty of Rust-related vacancies spanning software and hardware development, support engineering, and systems and security engineering at Amazon.

The way AWS is sponsoring and using Rust as a programming language in its different services shows that Rust is going to be an important part of AWS.  If you are planning to make your career in AWS cloud computing, today or tomorrow, you need to learn Rust programming language.  

It’s hard not to love Rust because Rust is a wonderful way to create memory-safe, high-performance applications, and software. Welcome to the future.

Download and install Rust for windows

You can download Rust for windows using the following URL:

https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install

Download the installer, then run the program and follow the onscreen instructions. You will get the following screen:

AWS is in love with RUST

Enter Y to continue, you will get the following screen

Enter 1 to continue with default installation. Once it’s done, you will see the following screen.

AWS is in love with RUST

Press enter to continue. You have successfully installed Rust. Now let’s write HelloWorld Program to 

Write and run the HelloWorld program using Rust

  • Open the notepad and write the following lines of the code in a notepad file
//Main function
fn main() {
    println!("Hello, world!");
}
  • Save the file as HelloWorld.rs
  • Open the command prompt and compile the HelloWorld.rs program using the rustc command.

rustrc HelloWorld.rs

  • Finally, run the program by using the command filename.exe.
HelloWorld.exe

You can also choose the IDE of your choice to compile and run the program.

Future of Rust

Rust functions as a strictly better alternative for C. Many companies have rewrote done in Rust to escape performance degradation. Teams reach for it when they need extra performance but want to avoid memory issues associated with C.

Apart from memory management, Rust has far more benefits: it makes lower-level programming more accessible, has excellent support for WASM, and is fantastic for concurrency. Here are a few points which make RUST so popular among developers:

  • Guaranteed memory safety
  • Open source
  • Fast
  • Minimal runtime
  • Type inference

In the future, Rust usage will increase as more and more companies discover how it can improve their codebases.

Hope this information is helpful. We will keep sharing more about RUST in our upcoming blogs. Stay tuned! 

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