Nowadays Rust is mentioned in lots of places. Being that Rust is the “new” kid on the block, setting new trends throughout the tech and programming world, it’s sometimes hard to have a grasp of where exactly Rust is used. Today I’m presenting a non-exhaustive list of big projects and companies that use Rust. Note that many of these companies don’t have only one Rust project, but I’m highlighting the most talked about and significant.

The (not) full list

(Thanks to the wonderful folks at lobste.rs and everyone who contacted for additions)

I’ll expand this list in the future with comentaries. If you know of a project that uses Rust that is not mentioned, please get in contact with me!

Why this matters

No matter how much we (Rust developers) like to think that Rust is now mainstream, truth is that while we’ve crossed the chasm, Rust is still nowhere near the popularity of C++, or even Java.

Programming language usage is a weird metric, because while it heavily depends on factors outside of the language developers control. The Rust Project might control the compiler, new language design or tooling around Rust. But these people do not control the whole ecosystem around the language. The Rust Project does not control Youtube Videos, blog articles or the number of crates (libraries) that are uploaded to our registry.

This means that no matter how good (and fast) Clippy is, or how great the memory safety caused by the borrow checker is. The first language that’s taught in many universities is still Java. People use Javascript for everything and C++ is still used in planes. This is why I find it important to highlight and underscore which projects have tried Rust, how the process went and what they learned along the way.

At the end of the day there’s no blitzscaling for programming languages. Or at least, we haven’t found it yet.