In a recent interview, Luca Palmieri, Mainmatter’s Principal Engineering Consultant and author of “Zero to Production in Rust,” spoke with Luciano Mammino, a Senior Architect with extensive experience in cloud-native development and author of “Node.js Design Patterns.” They talked about Luciano’s journey from using high-level programming languages like JavaScript to adopting Rust for serverless computing, particularly in AWS Lambda.
Driven by the need for better performance in a Lambda function, Luciano began exploring Rust, appreciating its efficiency and safety features. Despite the learning curve, he found Rust’s approach to memory management to be a powerful tool for building reliable, performant code.
Luciano highlighted that serverless computing is an ideal entry point for Rust in organizations. The combination of Rust’s efficiency and AWS Lambda’s scalability can lead to significant cost savings and performance improvements. He also pointed out the availability of tools like Cargo Lambda, which streamline the deployment process of Rust functions in a serverless environment.
While Rust may be challenging to learn, Luciano emphasized the confidence it brings in production environments due to its focus on safety. He believes that as more developers and organizations experience these benefits, Rust will gain more traction in the serverless ecosystem. Luciano’s experience offers valuable insights for anyone considering Rust for their next cloud-native project, demonstrating the language’s potential to optimize serverless functions and build more reliable applications.