from Hacker News

Rust vs. Go: Battle for the Back End

by naveed125 on 3/9/25, 8:20 AM with 52 comments

• by DeathArrow on 3/9/25, 8:34 AM

  >the truth is when we needed super high performance in production, the answer was either Go or Rust.

  For high performance, the answer is C, C++, Zig or Rust.

  For backend it can be Go, it can be Java, it can be C#, it can be Python or Javascript.

  C# is on par performance wise with Go and I suspect the same for Java.

  Choosing a language for something has to be done by considering trade offs, benefits and disadvantages, on both long and short term.

  Rust would fit system programming while Go will fit the backend. I know "the right tool for the job" is very often mentioned but I will mention it again.

  For backend I would be interested in a functional language, be it F#, OCaml, Elixir or Clojure, because I grew tired of OOP, SOLID, design patterns, clean coding, kingdom of nouns and Uncle Bob. All things, I used long ago to believe in. But since no one is hiring functional programming and I don't have the resources to be the sole owner and developer of a startup, I am stuck in kingdom of nouns.

• by go-nil-why on 3/9/25, 8:29 AM

  The fact that Go is considered a “modern” language and nil pointer exceptions are downright common blows my mind every day. Is there a static checker config that folks use to reduce this risk? Because coming from a TS background it’s legitimately bizarre to me that at $COMP insufficient nil pointer checking regularly causes major production outages.

• by notimetorelax on 3/9/25, 8:30 AM

  Did I read it right, the article used Claude to get the performance stats?

• by silisili on 3/9/25, 8:51 AM

  There's no real battle, except for language zealots.

  Go gets a ton of things right for easy programming, and presents a super readable language with concurrency as a forethought.

  Rust take a more conservative approach with a focus on correctness, and is the more performant language typically, for when you need it.

  I don't at all see them filling the same niche, so I can't understand why this argument comes up so often.

• by colesantiago on 3/9/25, 8:47 AM

  There doesn't seem to be anything new here with Rust and Go that we already didn't know.

  Reading the article, it looks like this article is generated by an LLM, as most things are nowadays.

• by wood_spirit on 3/9/25, 8:31 AM

  So can someone sum up what is said below the paywall fold?