Rust has leaped to its highest position ever in the monthly Tiobe index of language popularity, scaling to the 13th spot this month, with placement in the top 10 anticipated in an upcoming edition.
Previously, Rust has never gone higher than 17th place in the Tiobe Programming Index. Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen attributed Rust’s ascent in the just-released July index to a February 2024 US White House report recommending Rust over C/C+, for safety reasons. He also credited the growing community and ecosystem support for the language. “Rust is finally moving up. After the tailwind of the US government, which recently announced to recommend moving from C/C++ to Rust for security reasons, things are going fast for Rust,” Jansen said. “The community is growing, including the number of third-party libraries and tools. In short, Rust is preparing itself for a top 10 position in the Tiobe index.”
Rust is billed as being fast and memory-safe, with no runtime or garbage collector. It can power performance-critical services, run on embedded devices, and integrate with other languages, proponents say. Still, C++ in particular has done well recently in climbing the index, even after the US White House report, rising to second place in June.
