2023 Rust Nation: Highlights From The UK's First Rust Event
27th February, 2023 5 minutes
Our team of specialist Rust recruiters James Hunt, Cedric Sellmann and Max Chason, recently headed into London for Rust Nation 2023.
The first of its kind in the UK, Rust Nation brought together hundreds of Rust Developers for two exciting days of Rust talks, training and workshops.
This community-driven event hosted at The Brewery was a fantastic opportunity for Rustaceans to learn, share, and engage with others who have a passion for Rust. And although Rust is a relatively new programming language that has been gaining popularity for its performance and security benefits, Rust Nation highlighted how quickly the community of Rust developers in the UK is growing.
“It was amazing to see how many people had attended, I really wasn’t expecting that many. It just highlighted how this community is growing and the passion we share for the language. I think ‘community’ was the best way to describe the day – everyone I spoke to was so happy to share, learn and engage. I’m excited already to see what next year’s event is like!"
Cedric Sellmann
Head of Rust Recruitment at Understanding Recruitment
The event provided a fantastic opportunity to catch up with people (some of whom our team had been speaking to for over three years), share experiences, and grow our immediate network while forming new relationships. It was also a great platform for the Understanding Recruitment team to learn more about the community, speak with engineers and employers, and support the growth of Rust.
The event had several keynote speakers, but Rebecca Rumbul (Head of The Rust Foundation), Conrad Ludgate (Senior Engineer, TrueLayer), and Tobie Morgan Hitchcock (Founder of SurrealDB) stood out with their talks on The Rust Foundation and community, Async Rust, and why the team at SurrealDB transitioned to Rust, respectively.
Here are our top 10 takeaways from Rust Nation:
- Rust is growing fast: The Rust community is rapidly expanding and gaining popularity among developers and engineers, who are realizing the benefits of using Rust for building systems, tools, and applications. This growth is reflected in the increasing number of Rust projects, contributors, and companies adopting Rust.
- Community is key: The Rust community is supportive, collaborative, and welcoming, which makes it easier for people to learn Rust, share knowledge, and contribute to the community. There are several community hubs, such as Rust Mentors, Rustlings, and Exercism, that provide resources, support, and guidance for newcomers and experienced Rust developers alike.
- The future of Rust is promising: Led by people in the community who truly care about the advancement of the language, Rust's design philosophy and focus on safety, performance, and expressiveness make it a language that is well-suited for the future of computing. Rust is designed to be scalable, modular, and easy to maintain, which means that it can adapt to new technologies and use cases.
- Hiring Rustaceans can be tricky: One of the main points of discussion during Rust Nation was that many companies are facing hiring struggles when it comes to finding Rust talent. We’ve been working in Rust for four years now, not many teams can say that, so we have some decent experiences to share and can help find the best Rustaceans in the UK, Europe, and the US.
- Rust is secure: Rust's focus on memory safety, thread safety, and zero-cost abstractions makes it a highly secure programming language that is suitable for building systems that require high levels of security, such as operating systems, web browsers, and financial applications.
- Rust is fast: Rust's performance is exceptional, thanks to its low-level control over system resources, its efficient memory management, and its built-in concurrency support. This makes Rust a great choice for building high-performance systems and applications.
- Rust is versatile: Rust can be used for a wide range of applications, from low-level systems programming to web development, network programming, game development, and more. This versatility makes Rust a powerful language for building modern, complex systems.
- Rust is one of the toughest languages to learn: But despite its reputation for being a complex language, Rust is easier to learn for developers who are familiar with other systems programming languages, such as C or C++ but for everyone else it may take longer. The Rust Community welcomes engineers from any background and is willing to help out newcomers.
- Async Rust is the future: Async programming is becoming increasingly important in modern systems development, and Rust is well-positioned to take advantage of this trend. Several speakers at Rust Nation highlighted the importance of Async Rust and the benefits it can bring to complex systems development.
- Rust is enterprise-ready: Rust's growing popularity and its strong focus on security and performance make it an attractive choice for enterprise-level development. Several companies at Rust Nation showcased their use of Rust for building critical systems and applications.
Overall, Rust Nation 2023 was a fantastic event that brought together the Rust community and highlighted the potential of Rust in different industries. Rust inertia is falling away, and more businesses of all shapes and sizes are realizing the comparative benefits of building systems in Rust. Community support is underpinning this growth. It was great to see how excited attendees were about what the future holds for Rust, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone at Rust Nation 2024!
“Events like Rust Nation provide an invaluable opportunity to come together and discuss what’s next for the sector and how developers as well as businesses can benefit.”
Max Chason
Rust Account Manager at Understanding Recruitment
