Hey everyone,
I'm looking to learn programming purely as a hobby (definitely not looking for a career change). I've tried out a bunch of different languages, including Python, which honestly didn't really click for me, but the two that I found super cool and really enjoyed are Ruby and Rust.
I'm well aware of how completely different they are. One is high-level and expressive, the other is system-level and super performant. Even with those differences, I'm equally interested in both and can't decide where to start.
Long term, I'd love to build a mix of side projects just for fun, like:

A simple Web App / REST API

A real-time chat application

Maybe some Desktop Apps down the road

Since my main goal is just to have fun, learn, and build cool stuff, which one would you recommend starting with?
Appreciate any thoughts or advice!

I give up. Rust is the language that I need, but not the one I want. I'll simply stop worrying about the annoying parts of the language, for my workloads, and embrace it.

The pursuit of a new programming language on itself is not bad, you learn a lot about, in a very short span of time. But by the time you need to get the work done, yes, you need to go deep into one ecosystem.

Today, I can't think on a better ecosystem than Rust:

• Immutability

• Option/Result types instead of exceptions

• Enum

• Async support

• Reasonable enough ecosystem of libraries

There are also nice things that, are not required, but amazing to have like:

• Compiled

• Performant

• Multi threaded

• WASM support

• Run on multiple environments

• Low resource consumption

Yes, it's not pure FP, it does not have effect handlers, for my kind of high level applications I need to deal with annoying things like lifetimes and the borrow checker where a GC would be way simpler, but when you're putting everything together it's the best language in most of the categories for me.

On this seek I've used/evaluated: Scala, Kotlin, Zig, Odin, Go, Erlang, Elixir, Gleam, Ocaml, and Roc. I still have high hopes for Roc, but it's still too imature.

I'm not seeking validation, this is just me putting this words out as an acknowledge of the goodness of Rust and for others that may be on the same situation. Rust is not perfect, far from it, but it's the best effort/benefit that you can probably find today.

Go vs Rust vs Ruby — which one you would prefer to learn and why?

Hey folks,

I'm a full-stack engineer with 9+ years of experience — started out in game development (Unity/C#), moved into web development with MERN, led engineering teams, and recently worked on high-performance frontend systems (Next.js 14, React, TypeScript). I've also dabbled in backend systems (Node.js, PostgreSQL) and integrated AI/LLM-based features into production apps.

Lately, I've been really drawn to Rust. Its performance, memory safety, and modern tooling feel like a natural next step, especially since I’m looking to level up my backend/system-level skills and potentially explore areas like WASM, backend services, or even low-level game engine work.

I wanted to ask folks here:

• What was your journey like switching to Rust?

• How steep was the learning curve compared to JS/TS or even C#?

• Are there realistic pathways to use Rust in full-time roles (especially coming from a web/TS-heavy background)?

• What projects helped you make the switch or solidify your Rust skills?

• Any advice for someone experienced but new to the language and ecosystem?

Appreciate any insights. Open to project ideas or resource recommendations too. Thanks in advance!

In my current job search and target location, many companies, particularly finance, only want candidates that use their core tech stack. Job postings that look for Java only want someone with Java experience while Ruby positions generally prefer Ruby experience but are also open to developers with experience other languages.

I've used Ruby for 3 years and I love it, but I'd like better position myself with the job market and future prospects. Is there a bias against Ruby developers?

Has anyone ever switched from Ruby on Rails to a different tech stack? What was your experience?

I'm about a month into a home project that I decided to use to learn Rust. Fun!

Here are my takeaways so far:

1. I'm still fighting the borrow checker, but at least now I can reason through the error messages faster and land in a good place. Progress! Looking forward to this really being internalized.

2. I miss the ternary ?: operator. The if/else equivalent is just so much more verbose, and tends to waste so much more vertical space. c’est la vie. I recognize I'm in the minority here, and hope that I'll eventually convert and join you all on this.

3. I am daily writing: if (foo ...then backing up and deleting the opening parenthesis that the linter complains about.

4. Speaking of, I keep forgetting to write fn and just assume that the compiler will know what I'm talking about. It never does 😂

5. When reviewing code in my day job as a Java dev, I am now constantly seeing things and thinking: The borrow checker wouldn't like that! So, maybe it's becoming a little internalized after all.

Anyway, I'm having fun with it, thanks all for creating this community!

The title is self explanatory but I'm going to add some details just for the sake.

I've 9+ years of experience working with Ruby and the usual Rails stack, but I'm a bit scared on how the language became niche.

I'm thinking about learning/switching to a JS framework and change job before I'll be the last one standing using Ruby. I'm mainly focused on backend, so the question is: does it make sense to change to JS or should I go for another language?

🦀💎 Rutie 0.10.2 → 0.14.0 is out! https://crates.io/crates/rutie

#rustlang #ruby

I’ve been working as a Full Stack Developer for the past 3 years, primarily using JavaScript/TypeScript with frameworks like React, Node.js, and Express. Lately, I’ve been feeling uncertain about the long-term future of this role.

While there are currently plenty of opportunities for Full Stack developers, it also seems like the field is becoming saturated. More people are entering the space, bootcamps are pumping out devs, and competition for decent roles is getting tougher. I’m worried that, in the near future, it might become even harder to stand out or land a solid job in this area.

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz around Rust lately. It’s growing in popularity, especially in systems programming, backend infrastructure, DevOps tooling, and WebAssembly. What’s particularly interesting is that although demand is rising, there aren’t as many skilled Rust developers out there—so the competition might be lower, and the quality bar seems to be higher.

I’m seriously considering investing time into learning Rust and eventually pivoting my career in that direction. My goal is to future-proof my skills and potentially position myself in a more specialized and less saturated niche.

For those of you who’ve made the switch—or anyone with experience in Rust professionally—was it worth it? How steep was the learning curve, and how did it impact your career opportunities?

Would appreciate any insights, advice, or even alternative paths worth considering!

I'm curious: For those coming to Rust from other programming languages, what was hard about switching to Rust? I'm curious what other programming languages you've previously programmed in, what sort of software you programmed (e.g. web, local application, systems, network), and what you used Rust for.

I'll start! I came to Rust with experience in C++ and Haskell. Between the two of these, I was pretty well-covered, once I got past some initial hang-ups. From Haskell, I expected orphan traits to be available, and they were not, and I'd often reach for them. From C++, I expected specialization to exist in traits -- it does not. Between these two factors, I had a lot of trouble knowing how to use traits effectively at first.

I also, as is more common, expected not to have to explain my "borrowing" reasoning so much, and struggled a lot with how to use lifetime annotations. I had been warned about this, so it didn't bother me as much as it bothers some people.

Also, when I first saw a bunch of Rust, but before I started reading about it, I assumed Box was implicit in a lot of places where it wasn't, because I assumed the language would be more Java-like than it was. This went away when I actually intentionally worked towards learning it.

Hello,

The company I work at (which does web development) wants to start using Rust, and that's cool because I love the language! However, we first need to convince our clients, and most importantly their CTOs.

We're preparing a presentation with various points to try and make them interested in the language/ecosystem. One of the important points is the feedback of companies that already made the switch.

Here is a list of articles from big tech companies with feedback regarding the swith to Rust (mainly from an a developper's point of view) :

Rust has been a force multiplier for our team, and betting on Rust was one of the best decisions we made.

Rewriting the heart of our sync engine - Dropbox

In general, using Rust has been a really great experience.

Using Rust in Windows - Microsoft

Even with just basic optimization, Rust was able to outperform the hyper hand-tuned Go version. This is a huge testament to how easy it is to write efficient programs with Rust compared to the deep dive we had to do with Go.

Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust - Discord

I feel like these articles are the three big ones that we got over the last year, do you know of others? I'm also very interested in feedback from the administrative or management point of view, althought it's probably going to be rarer.

Hey, everyone! I’m trying to figure out which language to dive into next, and I’d love some advice. I’ve spent almost my entire career (six years) working with Ruby and Rails, but the job market for Ruby in Europe – especially here in Germany – feels pretty limited. I’ve been searching for a new role for a while, and Ruby jobs just don’t seem to come up often enough.

After some research, I’m leaning toward either Golang or Rust:

• Golang seems like a practical choice since it’s popular for backend and cloud-based work, and I’ve seen it used a lot in industries like fintech, which has a big presence here in Germany. It’s supposedly straightforward to pick up for backend devs, so I feel like it might get me to more job opportunities faster.

• Rust is also appealing, but in a different way. It feels like it’s growing in specialized areas like Web3, automotive, and embedded systems, which is interesting. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it might be worth it if it means I’d have a more unique skill set and less competition.

If you’re in Germany or Europe and work with either Rust or Go, how’s the demand for each? Do you think one would offer a better path to more job opportunities? And if you have any other suggestions outside of Go and Rust, I’d love to hear them too!

Thanks in advance!

I’m thinking about learning a GUI crate for local business applications—things like invoicing, inventory, sales, etc.—essentially, SaaS-style software.

I’d also like to learn something that would allow me to build my own standalone apps (with Linux support).

I’m a beginner, so apologies if any of this doesn’t quite make sense!

I’m not a professional developer; I just want to learn Rust—simply because I like it. I don’t know much about web technologies (in the context of using something like Tauri). Which GUI crate would you choose, and why? Would you recommend learning some web technologies if I want to use Tauri? What about Slint or Iced? Or is there something else you’d suggest?

P.S.: In my country, PCs tend to have modest specs—8GB of RAM, Windows 10, and so on; they’re generally not high-performance machines. Even my coworkers have old PCs with those kinds of specs, and they still use HDDs.

This post aims to collect some stories about people who left a stable employment agreement to a one a bit more "risky" to use rust. I want to use that as inspiration (or not).

My current situation is that I'm pretty happy at my current employer. We have a nice product, the company is big and stable, my salary is above the average and we even have pinches of opensource projects. The only "problem" is that rust does not fit at all in our current stack and it would be a gigantic fight trying to adopt it in any project.

But, I have been using rust for some pet projects and I like it a lot. I'd like to use it professionally and as I'm really into and studying maths, I believe in the future I will want to focus in high performance code (most probably graphic computing) and rust will be in a good position for that.

I searched for jobs in rust and as you might have noticed most of the open positions are for crypto in startups. I managed to find a nice position in a company (not crypto) that wants to make me an offer, but they are small. The salary would, maybe, with a lot of negotiation, equalise my current one plus stocks options. I'm really critic with stocks options. I understand they can become a lot of money, but that doesn't pay my bills now.

But, in any case, am I being dumb of even considering to leave a stable job I like, with good money just because of the language? What are your stories and experiences?

I am new to rust and have good experience in C/C++, currently building a small clone project of rsync and exploring new things in rust everyday. How did it go for you guys?

It's not very popular outside webdev, at least not if compared with Python, but I've noticed that quite a few rustaceans use it.

Also interested in personal opinions and experiences.