Rust vs Swift: What Are The Main Differences?

There’s no question that programming is one of the hottest topics right now. Students are very much attracted to programming, and they want to learn programming languages. But, they often get confused between several choices. 

So, to make it easy for them, today we are here with detailed information about Rust vs Swift. Both these languages are two of the most popular programming languages. 

Before jumping right into the differences between Rust and Swift, let’s have a look at the basics of these programming languages.

What is Rust?

Rust is a high-level, general-purpose, statically typed, and multi-paradigm programming language that was mainly designed for safety and performance. Its syntax is somewhat similar to the C++ programming language. 

Rust is very fast and memory-efficient. It allows developers to create efficient software at a rapid pace. Rust can integrate with other programming languages and can work on embedded systems. 

Moreover, it can be utilized for browser components, simulation engines for VR and games, file systems, operating systems, and many other things. It can easily solve the problems that were hard to solve with C and C++ languages. 

Many small to big organizations use the Rust programming language. For example, Dropbox, Cloudflare,  Mozilla, npm, Postmates, Braintree are some of the popular companies that use the Rust language for production.

Rust Program To Add Two Numbers

Program

fn main() {     let num1 = 32;     let num2 = 18;     let add = num1 + num2; println!(“Sum of {0} and {1} is {2}”, num1, num2, add); }

Output

Sum of 32 and 18 is 50

What is Swift?

Swift is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose, and compiled programming language. It was developed by Apple Inc along with the open-source community and released in 2014. Swift is mainly used for desktop applications, mobile applications, system programming, scale-up of cloud services, and many other things. 

It was created to replace Objective-C, which was Apple’s earlier programming language. The code of Swift is safe, interactive, modern, and fast. Moreover, it is a beginner-friendly programming language because its syntax is very expressive, clean, and easy to code. 

Swift is built with the LLVM compiler, an open-source framework included in Xcode from version 6. It uses the Objective-C runtime library on the Apple platform, enabling Objective-C, C, C++, and Swift code within the same program.

Swift Program To Add Two Numbers

Program

import Foundation  var number1 = 21;  var number2 = 32;  var add = Int();  add = number1+number2;  print(“number1 + number2 = “,add);

Output

$swift main.swift number1 + number2 =  53

Rust vs Swift- What Are Pros and Cons of Using These Languages?

We can better learn about Rust vs Swift by analyzing the pros and cons of using these programming languages.

Pros Of Using Rust

Memory Management

Memory management is one of the main advantages of using the Rust language. Rust is mainly designed for system programming, and it does not have runtime and does not perform any background processing, i.e., garbage collection. 

However, it provides automatic memory management, which is not common among other programming languages.

Concurrent: 

Rust is a concurrent programming language. It provides built-in support for concurrency.

Support Generic

Rust supports generics and has an excellent type system. Therefore, programmers do not need to write the same dictionary classes and array multiple times.

Error Catching

Rust is a statically typed programming language. So, the errors are caught at the compile time. Rust does not support exceptions. It uses the type result <T, E> for recoverable errors, and it uses a panic! Macro to notify and stop the execution.

Optimal Code

Rust allows the developers to write optimal code every time. That means Rust programmers don’t need the understanding of the compiler code to optimize their program.

Documentation

The documentation of Rust describes the working of data structures and provides architectural guidelines on their suitable usage. It has strong community support and windows compatibility, making it an ideal choice for many people.

Cons of Using Rust

Compilation Speed

The compilation speed of Rust is slow compared to other popular programming languages.

Complexity

Rust programming language takes more time to learn and understand due to its complexity.

Now, let’s have a look at the pros and cons of the Swift programming language, which will aid you to understand Rust vs Swift. 

Pros of Using Swift

Memory Management

Swift provides automatic memory management and uses Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) to prevent memory leaks and increase performance.

Scalability

Swift programming language is future proof, which means programmers can extend it by adding new features. 

Support Generic

The support for generics in Swift is similar to Rust. However, the primary difference is the generic specialization in Swift is an implementation detail, whereas  Rust uses monomorphization for specializing the generic entirely.

Easy to Understand

Swift is very easy to read, write, and understand as compared to Rust. It has a straightforward and expressive syntax that can be understood easily even by a novice programmer.

Performance and Safety

Swift, as its name implies, was developed with a focus on speed. It provides robust error handling and statically typed characteristics that help the programmer know the errors before compilation and prevent the code crash. Therefore, it offers better performance and safety.

Cons Of Using Swift 

Community

Despite being one of the fastest-growing programming languages, the community of Swift is still smaller in comparison to other open-source languages. That means, if you are creating a project with Swift programming, you may face challenges in finding community support.

Rust vs Swift- Search Trends

As per Google Trends, Swift programming language is more popular than the Rust programming language over the last 12 months google search in the United States.

Also Read: Rust vs C++

Conclusion

In this blog, we have provided detailed information on Rust vs Swift. We have seen the advantages and disadvantages of both these languages. Hopefully, this has helped you to know about Rust vs Swift. Now you can easily choose one among these languages according to your needs.

In case, you are still confused or need Rust Assignment Help, you can discuss it with our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions