A Decade Later: Rust Challenges C++ and Java's Reign

This article revisits a 2011 Google report comparing idiomatic implementations of a loop recognition algorithm in C++, Java, Go, and Scala. A decade later, the programming landscape has shifted, with Rust emerging as a strong contender. The author replicates the experiment, comparing safe and unsafe Rust implementations. Safe Rust shows faster compilation but slightly slower execution than C++; unsafe Rust outperforms both C++ and safe Rust. Benchmarks across code size, compile times, memory footprint, and runtime reveal Rust's compelling performance and memory efficiency, especially in release builds, surpassing C++.