Speaker: Léo Letellier

Date: Thursday 06th of February 2025, 1:15pm.

Abstract:

To Rust or not to Rust, that is the question in today's choice of programming languages. While hunting for bugs and security vulnerabilities is a principal concern in software development, memory safety is found to be involved in a majority of such cases (70% of all vulnerabilities reported by a Microsoft engineer in 2019). Multiple tools and enhancements are proposed to mitigate this risk. The Rust programming language was developed to answer this problem in a more controlled way, providing systematic memory safety while preserving performance. It is particularly fit for usage in CLI (Command Line Interface), networking, and embedded devices. It also targets WebAssembly, making code web-ready with minimal changes. Considering these features, multiple agencies such as the NSA emphasize the need to use memory-safe languages such as Rust. Rust was also determined to be the most admired language for multiple years in a row by the developer survey of Stackoverflow (83% in 2024), and is ranked 14 in the January 2025 Tiobe index.