Go to Rust - A Gopher’s Temporary Journey
As a Go developer, I decided to spend a few months exploring Rust to understand what all the hype was about. This series documents my journey—the good, the bad, and the compiler errors.
Why This Journey?
Go has been my go-to language (pun intended) for backend development. Its simplicity, fast compilation, and built-in concurrency made it perfect for building scalable systems. But I kept hearing about Rust’s memory safety guarantees, zero-cost abstractions, and fearless concurrency. I wanted to see if the learning curve was worth it.
This isn’t a “which language is better” debate. Both languages excel at different things. This is simply one developer’s honest experience switching contexts.
First Impressions
The initial shock of leaving Go’s comfort zone
Day 1 with Rust: A Gopher's First Impressions
Initial Reactions
- First encounter with ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes
- The culture shock of verbose error handling
- Why everything feels harder than it should
Cargo vs Go Modules: Package Management Face-Off
Tooling Comparison
- Cargo.toml vs go.mod - configuration approaches
- Dependency resolution and version constraints
- Build commands, workspaces, and features
Hello World in Rust: Why It's More Complex Than Go
First Program Analysis
- Comparing the simplest programs in both languages
- Understanding macros vs functions
- Why Rust's "Hello World" teaches you more
Setting Up Rust: Tooling Compared to Go's Simplicity
Developer Experience
- rustup vs Go's official installer
- IDE support: rust-analyzer vs gopls
- The learning curve of tooling ecosystem
The Rust Compiler: Why It Yells at You (And Go Doesn't)
Compiler Philosophy
- Go's permissive runtime vs Rust's strict compile-time checks
- Understanding borrow checker error messages
- Why fighting the compiler actually helps you
Core Differences
The fundamental paradigm shifts
Ownership and Borrowing: The Concept Go Doesn't Have
Memory Management Philosophy
- Move semantics vs Go's implicit copying
- Borrowing rules and the borrow checker
- Why you can't just pass data around freely
No Garbage Collector: How Rust Manages Memory Without GC
Memory Without Runtime Overhead
- Compile-time memory management vs runtime GC
- RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization) pattern
- Trade-offs: predictability vs ease of use
Lifetimes Explained: The Annotation Go Developers Never Needed
Reference Validity
- What lifetimes actually represent
- Common lifetime patterns and elision rules
- When you need explicit lifetime annotations
Mut vs Immutable: Why Rust Makes You Choose
Explicit Mutability
- Immutable by default vs Go's mutable everything
- Interior mutability patterns (Cell, RefCell, Mutex)
- How explicit mutability prevents bugs
String vs &str: Rust's Confusing String Types for Go Devs
String Handling
- Owned String vs borrowed &str
- Why Rust has multiple string types
- Conversion patterns and common pitfalls
Option<T> and Result<T>: No More Nil Pointers
Explicit Error Handling
- Option for handling absence vs Go's nil
- Result for errors vs Go's error return values
- The ? operator and combinator methods
What I Learned
This temporary journey into Rust taught me:
Rust’s Strengths:
- Compile-time guarantees prevent entire classes of bugs
- Zero-cost abstractions deliver C++ performance with better safety
- The type system catches errors that would be runtime panics in Go
- Memory safety without garbage collection pauses
Go’s Strengths:
- Faster development iteration with simpler mental model
- Gentler learning curve for teams
- Excellent for I/O-bound network services
- Garbage collection handles most cases just fine
Key Takeaway: Neither language is “better.” Rust makes you think harder upfront to prevent issues later. Go gets you productive faster but might bite you at runtime. Choose based on your project constraints, team experience, and performance requirements.
Recommended Reading Order
For Go Developers Curious About Rust:
- Start with Day 1 Impressions - Set realistic expectations
- Read Hello World Complexity - Understand the learning curve
- Tackle Ownership and Borrowing - The core mental shift
For Understanding Memory Management:
- No Garbage Collector - How Rust manages memory
- Ownership and Borrowing - The ownership system
- Lifetimes Explained - Reference validity
For Practical Differences:
- Cargo vs Go Modules - Package management
- String vs &str - String handling
- Option and Result - Error handling
Common Questions
Should I switch from Go to Rust? Not necessarily. Evaluate based on your use case. Systems programming, embedded, game engines? Consider Rust. Web services, microservices, cloud-native apps? Go is still excellent.
Is Rust harder than Go? Yes, objectively. Rust requires understanding ownership, lifetimes, and more complex type system concepts. Go was designed for simplicity.
Can I use both? Absolutely! Many teams use Go for rapid service development and Rust for performance-critical components. They interop well via FFI or gRPC.
How long to become productive in Rust coming from Go? Expect 2-3 months to feel comfortable, 6+ months to feel productive. The borrow checker will frustrate you at first—that’s normal.
Resources
Official Documentation:
- The Rust Book - Start here
- Rust by Example - Hands-on learning
- Rustlings - Small exercises
For Go Developers:
- Rust for Go Developers - Direct comparisons
- From Go to Rust - Detailed transition guide
Feedback & Discussion
Did you make a similar journey? Have questions about specific comparisons?
Email: [email protected] GitHub: @colossus21 LinkedIn: Rafiul Alam
After this journey, I returned to Go for most of my work, but with a deeper appreciation for explicit memory management and compile-time guarantees. The grass isn’t always greener—sometimes it’s just a different shade of green with more compiler errors.