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  5. Kotlin vs Rust

Kotlin vs Rust

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rust
Rust
Stacks6.1K
Followers5.0K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars107.6K
Forks13.9K
Kotlin
Kotlin
Stacks17.7K
Followers11.9K
Votes650
GitHub Stars51.5K
Forks6.1K

Kotlin vs Rust: What are the differences?

Kotlin and Rust are two modern programming languages with different characteristics and use cases. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Syntax and Style: Kotlin is a concise and expressive language that follows a Java-like syntax. It aims to improve Java by reducing boilerplate code and providing modern language features such as null safety and extension functions. On the other hand, Rust has a unique and powerful syntax with a focus on memory safety and performance. It is designed for systems-level programming and enforces strict ownership and borrowing rules.

  2. Memory Management: Kotlin utilizes automatic memory management through garbage collection, where the runtime system reclaims memory that is no longer in use. Rust, however, introduces a novel concept called ownership, which allows for deterministic memory management without a garbage collector. It ensures memory safety by enforcing strict rules on ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes.

  3. Concurrency and Parallelism: Kotlin provides support for concurrency with built-in coroutines, allowing for lightweight and scalable concurrency. It enables developers to write asynchronous code in a sequential style, making it easy to reason about. Rust, on the other hand, takes a different approach by emphasizing low-level control over concurrency. It provides features like threads, channels, and mutexes, but requires explicit management of synchronization and data sharing.

  4. Type System: Kotlin has a sophisticated type system that supports both object-oriented and functional programming paradigms. It includes features like type inference, smart casts, and sealed classes, enabling developers to write expressive and safe code. Rust has a strong static type system that prevents many common programming errors at compile-time. It supports algebraic data types, pattern matching, and generic programming, making it suitable for building high-performance and reliable systems.

  5. Ecosystem and Tooling: Kotlin benefits from its integration with the Java ecosystem, leveraging existing libraries, frameworks, and developers' knowledge. It has excellent tooling support with IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio. Rust, being a newer language, has a growing ecosystem with a focus on system-level programming. It has its package manager called Cargo, which simplifies dependency management and provides a consistent build experience.

  6. Community and Adoption: Kotlin has gained significant popularity in recent years, especially in the Android development community. It is an officially supported language for Android app development, which has contributed to its widespread adoption. Rust, on the other hand, is gaining momentum as a language for systems programming, due to its emphasis on safety, performance, and concurrency. It has a passionate and rapidly growing community, with increasing usage in various domains.

In summary, Kotlin is a modern language that combines object-oriented and functional programming, with a focus on developer productivity and compatibility with existing Java codebases. Rust, on the other hand, is designed for systems-level programming, prioritizing memory safety, performance, and concurrency control. Both languages have their strengths and use cases, catering to different domains and programming paradigms.

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Advice on Rust, Kotlin

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Nick
Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k
Comments
Zuriel
Zuriel

Jun 7, 2020

Needs advice

Can anyone help me decide what's best for app development or even android Oreo development? I'm in a state dilemma at the moment. I want to do Android programming, not necessarily web development. I have heard a lot of people recommend one of these, and it seems that both the tools can do the job. Which language would you choose?

291k views291k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Rust
Rust
Kotlin
Kotlin

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.

Kotlin is a statically typed programming language for the JVM, Android and the browser, 100% interoperable with Java

Statistics
GitHub Stars
107.6K
GitHub Stars
51.5K
GitHub Forks
13.9K
GitHub Forks
6.1K
Stacks
6.1K
Stacks
17.7K
Followers
5.0K
Followers
11.9K
Votes
1.2K
Votes
650
Pros & Cons
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
    No jobs
  • 4
    Variable shadowing
Pros
  • 73
    Interoperable with Java
  • 55
    Functional Programming support
  • 51
    Null Safety
  • 46
    Official Android support
  • 44
    Backed by JetBrains
Cons
  • 7
    Java interop makes users write Java in Kotlin
  • 4
    Frequent use of {} keys
  • 2
    Hard to make teams adopt the Kotlin style
  • 2
    Nonullpointer Exception
  • 1
    No boiler plate code

What are some alternatives to Rust, Kotlin?

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.

Elixir

Elixir

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.

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