Rust's Unpopular Criticisms | Generated by AI

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Question: What are unpopular opinions about the Rust programming language, using Rust to develop projects, or adopting it in startups or big corporations?

Answer:

Rust is widely praised for its memory safety, performance, and concurrency features, but it also attracts strong criticism, especially around its complexity and fit for certain environments. Below, I’ve compiled a list of unpopular opinions drawn from developer discussions, blog posts, and forums. These highlight trade-offs in productivity, hiring, and real-world use cases. I’ve grouped them into categories for clarity, focusing on those that challenge the hype around Rust.

General Opinions on Rust as a Language

• Rust’s borrow checker and ownership model create more friction than they solve for most developers: While it prevents memory bugs, it often forces excessive refactoring and puzzle-solving, making simple tasks feel overly engineered. Even experienced users report constant struggles, leading to lower productivity compared to garbage-collected languages like Go or Python.
• Rust is overhyped and not truly “safe” or revolutionary: Critics argue it’s just C++ with extra syntax sugar, still relying on unsafe blocks for real systems work, and it doesn’t eliminate logical errors or vulnerabilities from OS-level issues like zero-terminated strings. The “memory safety” narrative ignores that most bugs stem from bad design choices, not just memory management.
• The community is toxic and overly evangelical: Rust’s fans aggressively push it as superior, shaming users of “unsafe” languages like C++, which alienates potential adopters. This cult-like vibe, combined with DEI-focused onboarding (e.g., the official book’s intro), feels more like social engineering than technical discussion.
• Compile times and error messages are a nightmare: Rust encourages generics and zero-cost abstractions, but this balloons build times (especially with dependencies) and produces cryptic, cascading errors that frustrate iteration. It’s better for deliberate, optimized code than quick experimentation.
• Rust isn’t ideal for low-level or high-level work—it’s stuck in the middle: For bare-metal systems, unsafe makes it clumsier than C; for high-level apps, it’s less expressive than languages with dependent types or built-in runtimes. It’s only truly shines in a narrow “mid-level” niche.

Opinions on Using Rust for Project Development

• Rust hinders prototyping and personal projects: It excels at production code but sucks for hacks or throwaway scripts—refactoring is mandatory instead of quick-and-dirty changes, and most early code gets discarded anyway. Stick to C or Python for experimentation.
• Porting legacy code to Rust is a waste of time: Decades-old C/C++ programs have already patched most bugs; rewriting introduces new errors without fixing logical flaws. Use Rust for greenfield projects only, not “rewrite it in Rust” cargo cults.
• Rust’s “shortcuts” undermine its safety promises: Tempting ergonomics (e.g., auto-dereferencing) lead to performance regressions when fixed, clashing with “ship fast” culture. It’s incompatible with enterprise pushes for speed over perfection.
• Backend development in Rust is straightforward—stop overhyping the difficulty: Unless you’re building custom allocators or async runtimes, it’s mostly data flow in handlers. The negativity stems from elitism; you can ship fast and error-free without “hard mode.”

Opinions on Using Rust in Startups

• Rust kills velocity in startups—prioritize simpler languages like Python or JS: Safety is great, but the steep learning curve slows onboarding and iteration. Startups need agility, not fighting the compiler; Rust’s benefits rarely outweigh hiring and productivity costs.
• Hiring Rust devs is a nightmare for scaling teams: Few experienced Rust engineers exist, leading to knowledge silos and resentment between “Rust experts” and newcomers. It’s a risky bet unless your product demands low-level perf from day one.

Opinions on Using Rust in Big Corporations

• Rust creates more problems than it solves in large orgs: Success stories (e.g., high-perf services) often lead to over-adoption, but refactoring blasts and thin stdlib increase cognitive load in evolving codebases. Monoliths in safer languages scale better initially.
• Corporate backing hides Rust’s flaws: Big Tech subsidies for tooling mask that it’s not simple or versatile enough for broad enterprise use. It’s pushed for security theater, but legacy integration and thin ecosystem make it a poor default.
• Rust jobs are stable but less forgiving than legacy languages: Less incompetence tolerance means higher pressure; it’s not a “career dead-end” like feared, but big corps stick to C++/Java for their massive codebases, limiting Rust’s footprint.

These opinions reflect a vocal minority frustrated by Rust’s rigidity in non-ideal scenarios. That said, Rust’s adoption in kernels (e.g., Linux) and companies like Microsoft shows it’s thriving where it fits—systems and perf-critical code. If you’re evaluating it, prototype a small project first to test the fit.

References:

• The Rust programming language absolutely positively sucks
• What are some unpopular opinions on Rust that you’ve come across?
• Why are some people against the Rust-Lang?
• Why do people hate Rust?
• My negative views on Rust
• Negative views on Rust (not mine!)
• I hate Rust (programming language)

• [I hate Rust (programming language)

  Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40091427)

• A genuine question, why do people hate rust
• What are legitimate problems with Rust?
• Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale
• Using Rust at a Startup: A Cautionary Tale - Slashdot

• [Rust Unpopular Opinion

  Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34386622)

• [Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

  Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33714007)

• Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale
• Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale
• Why is Rust so unpopular among programmers?

• [Why Rust is a great choice for startups

  Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31736703)

• Rust? Seriously? Why bother with it?
• Rust success story that killed Rust usage in a company
• Why don’t you use Rust at your company?
• Is Rust a career dead-end?
• Why is Rust community being so political?
• I actually might lose credibility for this one, but I don’t think startups should be using Rust
• We (IT crowd) need more common sense and less hysteria around Rust
• Rust is a great production language (engine programming), but it’s not a perfect prototyping language
• Rust is a great language… but dang I still struggle with the borrow checker constantly!
• My general thoughts on Rust: Excellent for short-lived programs… Clunky for long-lived programs… Toxic community
• The problem seems to be that Rust offers too many tempting shortcuts for a tool that prides itself on safety
• Porting decades old programs to Rust is dumb
• I’ve done some rust dev, not a fan of the language
• Unless you’re doing systems-level work… Rust for backend development is surprisingly straightforward
• Terrible idea for enterprise critical use software
• Rust, for me, sits in this weird spot
• I use rust. I have a lot of complaints about rust
• Rust is worth learning, but after writing it for a few years, Im disenchanted with it

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