State of Rust: Increasing global adoption supports positive outlook

The Rust Survey Working Group has reported impressive growth and increasing global adoption of the much-loved programming language.

The ‘State of Rust’ survey has been conducted for the past six years and provides valuable insights into the community's sentiments and preferences regarding Rust.

9,433 “Rustaceans” completed the most recent survey, an impressive 82 percent completion rate compared to 76 percent in the previous year. The increased engagement...

7 August 2023 | Languages

GitHub releases Blackbird code search engine

GitHub has released its reworked code search engine, Blackbird, which is built on Rust and promises faster and more comprehensive software repository exploration.

This revision, which has been in development for three years, is part of GitHub's efforts to enhance text-based search techniques for code queries.

With Blackbird, developers can quickly search, navigate, and comprehend their code, contextualize critical information and ultimately increase productivity. Colin...

10 May 2023 | Developer

Copilot X heralds a new era of AI-powered coding

GitHub has unveiled Copilot X, an upgraded version of its AI-powered coding assistance tool.

Copilot X adopts OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 model and now features chat and voice interfaces, support for pull requests, command-line support, and can generate answer questions from documentation:

https://twitter.com/marktenenholtz/status/1638549603753795584

Unlike traditional coding assistance tools that rely on simple code templates or pre-defined snippets, Copilot X uses...

24 March 2023 | Artificial Intelligence

Chromium will support third-party Rust libraries

Google has announced that it will allow third-party Rust libraries in its Chromium open-source browser project.

Chrome security team member Dana Jansens published a blog post on Thursday announcing the decision.

Jansens says that Google is now actively pursuing adding a production Rust toolchain to its build system.

“Our goal in bringing Rust into Chromium is to provide a simpler (no IPC) and safer (less complex C++ overall, no memory safety bugs in a sandbox...

13 January 2023 | Languages

Source code for Rust-based malware leaks on hacking forums

The source code for an info-stealing malware based on Rust has leaked on hacking forums.

Security analysts claim the malware is actively used in attacks and it appears to have a high antivirus evasion rate. VirusTotal returns a detection rate of around 22 percent.

The developer claims to have developed the malware in just six hours. Despite being based on Rust, the malware currently only targets Windows machines.

Cybersecurity firm Cyble analysed the malware...

26 July 2022 | Hacking & Security

Rust vulnerability enables attackers to delete files and directories

Maintainers of the Rust programming language have warned of a critical vulnerability that enables attackers to delete files and directories.

In a security advisory, the Rust Security Response Working Group wrote:

“The Rust Security Response WG was notified that the std::fs::remove_dir_all standard library function is vulnerable to a race condition enabling symlink following (CWE-363).

An attacker could use this security issue to trick a privileged program into...

24 January 2022 | Hacking & Security

2021 Stack Overflow Survey: React.js takes the web framework crown, Python is in-demand, and devs still love Rust

The 2021 edition of Stack Overflow’s developer survey features both substantial changes in the landscape while other elements have remained stubbornly resilient.

In a blog post, Stack Overflow’s Ben Popper and David Gibson wrote:

“This year’s survey was a little different than ones in years past. We opened our 2020 survey in February, and by the time we got around to publishing the results, the reality of work and daily life had shifted dramatically for people...

3 August 2021 | Development Tools

Python’s creator shares his thoughts on Rust, Go, Julia, and TypeScript

Python creator Guido van Rossum has shared his thoughts on some of those other programming languages making the rounds.

The “benevolent dictator” himself shared his views in an hour-long interview with Microsoft Principal Cloud Advocate Manager Francesca Lazzeri.

“I love languages, at least in theory,” says Van Rossum. “I always read language tutorials but I’m very bad at actually sort of downloading a language implementation and try to code something because...

24 May 2021 | Go

Why should you use Rust for developing distributed applications?

Rust was originally developed at Mozilla Research and has gained increasing traction as a popular language to develop distributed computing applications. Major software providers such as Microsoft and Amazon have announced publicly their affection for the language and the fact that they are using Rust in house as a means to develop safety-critical software components. Even more tellingly, the language has been voted by developers “the most loved programming language” every year since...

20 April 2021 | Development Tools

‘Most loved’ programming language Rust now has its own foundation

Rust, the world’s “most loved” programming language, now has its own independent foundation.

The language was originally designed by Graydon Hoare at Mozilla Research and has ranked “most loved” in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey for the past five years.

In a blog post, the Rust Foundation wrote:

“Mozilla, the original home of the Rust project, has transferred all trademark and infrastructure assets, including the crates.io package...

11 February 2021 | Languages