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  1. Stackups
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  5. Elixir vs Rust vs Swift

Elixir vs Rust vs Swift

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Swift
Swift
Stacks21.9K
Followers13.6K
Votes1.3K
Rust
Rust
Stacks6.1K
Followers5.0K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars107.6K
Forks13.9K
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

Elixir vs Rust vs Swift: What are the differences?

  1. Syntax and Paradigm Approach: Elixir follows a functional programming paradigm, focusing on immutability and pure functions, while Rust adopts a multi-paradigm approach with a strong emphasis on safety and performance. Swift, on the other hand, is a multi-paradigm language that combines object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

  2. Memory Management: Rust utilizes a unique ownership system with borrowing and lifetimes to ensure memory safety without requiring a garbage collector. Elixir, being a garbage-collected language, abstracts memory management from the developer. Swift uses Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) for managing memory, automatically deallocating objects when they are no longer needed.

  3. Concurrency and Parallelism: Elixir leverages the actor model through its built-in concurrency model, making it easier to write parallel programs using lightweight processes. Rust offers a powerful threading model with zero-cost abstractions for achieving parallelism. Swift provides support for asynchronous programming with tools like Grand Central Dispatch and SwiftNIO.

  4. Tooling and Ecosystem: Rust has a robust toolchain, including Cargo for package management, rustfmt for formatting, and clippy for linting, making it a seamless experience for developers. Elixir comes with Mix, a build tool that handles dependency management and project tasks efficiently. Swift is backed by Xcode, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with extensive features for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS development.

  5. Learning Curve and Community Support: Rust is often praised for its comprehensive and well-documented resources, helping developers overcome the initial learning curve of its borrow checker and ownership system. Elixir has a supportive community that values collaboration and knowledge-sharing, making it easier for newcomers to get started with the language. Swift benefits from the Apple ecosystem, leading to a sizable community and a plethora of resources for iOS and macOS development.

  6. Use Cases and Adoption: Rust is commonly used for systems programming, such as operating systems, game engines, and web browsers, where performance and safety are crucial. Elixir is ideal for building scalable and fault-tolerant distributed systems, taking advantage of its concurrency model. Swift is predominantly used for developing iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS applications due to its seamless integration with Apple's platforms.

In Summary, Elixir, Rust, and Swift differ in their syntax and paradigms, memory management approaches, concurrency models, tooling ecosystems, community support, and preferred use cases.

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Advice on Swift, Rust, Elixir

Johan
Johan

Jan 28, 2021

Decided

Context: Writing an open source CLI tool.

Go and Rust over Python: Simple distribution.

With Go and Rust, just build statically compiled binaries and hand them out.

With Python, have people install with "pip install --user" and not finding the binaries :(.

Go and Rust over Python: Startup and runtime performance

Go and Rust over Python: No need to worry about which Python interpreter version is installed on the users' machines.

Go over Rust: Simplicity; Rust's memory management comes at a development / maintenance cost.

Go over Rust: Easier cross compiles from macOS to Linux.

397k views397k
Comments
Omar
Omar

Feb 23, 2021

Needs adviceonRubyRubyJavaScriptJavaScriptRustRust

I was thinking about adding a new technology to my current stack (Ruby and JavaScript). But, I want a compiled language, mainly for speed and scalability reasons compared to interpreted languages. I have tried each one (Rust, Java, and Kotlin). I loved them, and I don't know which one can offer me more opportunities for the future (I'm in my first year of software engineering at university).

Which language should I choose?

443k views443k
Comments
Brayden
Brayden

Frontend Developer

Mar 22, 2021

Needs adviceonReactReactPythonPythonRustRust

Hey, 👋

My name is Brayden. I’m currently a Frontend React Developer, striving to move into Fullstack so I can expand my knowledge.

For my main backend language, I am deciding between @{Python}|tool:993|, @{Rust}|tool:1070|, and @{Go}|tool:1005|. I’ve tried each of them out for about an hour and currently, I like Python and Rust the most. However, I’m not sure if I’m missing out on something!

If anyone has advice on these technologies, I’d love to hear it!

Thanks.

525k views525k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Swift
Swift
Rust
Rust
Elixir
Elixir

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
107.6K
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
13.9K
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
21.9K
Stacks
6.1K
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
13.6K
Followers
5.0K
Followers
3.3K
Votes
1.3K
Votes
1.2K
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
Cons
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Complicated process for exporting modules
  • 1
    Is a lot more effort than lua to make simple functions
  • 1
    Its classes compile to roughly 300 lines of assembly
Pros
  • 146
    Guaranteed memory safety
  • 133
    Fast
  • 89
    Open source
  • 75
    Minimal runtime
  • 73
    Pattern matching
Cons
  • 28
    Hard to learn
  • 24
    Ownership learning curve
  • 12
    Unfriendly, verbose syntax
  • 4
    High size of builded executable
  • 4
    Many type operations make it difficult to follow
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand
Integrations
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
No integrations availableNo integrations available

What are some alternatives to Swift, Rust, Elixir?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Clojure

Clojure

Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.

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