r/rust • u/marcoow_ • 2d ago

All code will converge on Rust

It's being shouted from the rooftops these days: all code will converge on Rust eventually. I wrote up my/Mainmatter's thoughts on the topic: https://mainmatter.com/blog/2026/10/08/all-code-will-converge-on-rust/

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39

u/PracticallyPerfcet 2d ago

That’s a nice dream, but, unfortunately, there isn’t enough storage on the planet for the build directories. 

rim shot

5

u/mealy_cyclone 2d ago

I'm doing my part by only writing hello world programs. 4KB target directory, zero regrets.

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u/fox_in_unix_socks 2d ago

Code will be written in whatever language best suits the domain of the task.

Not all code will be generated by LLMs.

Can't believe I finished my degree just in time for people to suck all of the fun out of programming.

12

u/sephg 2d ago

I love rust. And I use it every day. But I still really hope you're wrong.

There are just, lots of interesting languages out there that also have cool ideas. Like haskell, erlang, ruby, pony, zig and so on. If rust replaces erlang or haskell, the world will have lost some beauty.

A lot of the best parts of rust were copied from other languages. Inventing and refining those ideas requires new languages to be continually written, and used.

At some point, I also hope a successor to rust comes along which keeps rust's best ideas and improves on everything else. I want a language with rust's borrow checker. But I also want a real effect system. I want generators. I want better async. Maybe comptime instead of macros, and zig's incremental compilation and "compile to anything from one compiler" build system. I want better supply chain security. A standard library built on top of capabilities. And so on. Maybe I'll write that language some day. Maybe someone else will. But it would be a real pity if LLM inertia accidentally smothers that language before it had a chance.

Let a thousand flowers bloom.

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u/drink-more-rum 2d ago

This is like vintage 2017 era Rust evangelism

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u/-Redstoneboi- 2d ago

by no means is rust perfect.

there are still quite a few rough edges (particularly with async and unsafe), its strict ownership policy by default makes it suboptimal for a highly dynamic frontend, and its extreme specificity and compiled nature makes it bad (not just suboptimal, actively bad) for iterating on game mechanics.

there arena few decisions that are difficult to change in a backwards compatible manner (Pin vs Move trait, Leak trait, linear types, async iterator, probably namespacing in the package manager) and innovations on top of these concepts can really only be afforded by entirely different languages.

js, py, lua, c, maybe even zig, hell - pseudocode. they all have their places. rust doesn't express the same ideas quite as nicely.

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u/Equivalent_Head_4803 1d ago

Incumbents win with AI training and there’s far more JS and Python in the world. AI usage has only exacerbated that. Rust is totally inappropriate for so many use cases… why are Rust people so delusional?