By ByteBot
Between December 27-29, 2025, three major Rust-based developer tools hit GitHub’s trending list at the same time: RustPython, a complete Python interpreter with 21,204 stars; fresh, a terminal text editor that loads 2GB files in 600ms; and a wave of Rust-powered infrastructure projects. This isn’t coincidence. It’s developers voting with their keyboards on what the future of dev tooling looks like – and Rust is winning.
The pattern tells the story. When building a Python interpreter, you could use C (traditional choice) or Python itself (slow). RustPython chose Rust for JIT compilation and WebAssembly support. When building a terminal editor, you could use C/C++ (complex) or Go (easier). fresh chose Rust to achieve 36MB memory usage on multi-gigabyte files. Different domains, same decision: performance and safety matter more than convenience.
The Numbers Back the Trend
This isn’t just three projects. Stack Overflow’s 2024 survey of 65,000 developers named Rust the most admired language for the ninth consecutive year, with 83% of users wanting to continue using it. That’s the highest sustained satisfaction rate in the survey’s history. Rust hit #13 in the TIOBE Index in February 2025 – its highest position ever – and JetBrains’ 2025 State of Developer Ecosystem survey found Rust has the “highest perceived growth potential” among all programming languages.
The adoption data is even more striking. 2.3 million developers used Rust in the last 12 months, and GitHub shows 300% growth in Rust-based projects between 2020 and 2025. Industry analysts note that C++ has become the “most commonly replaced language in 2024,” with Rust as the primary alternative. And 45% of companies now run Rust in production, including Microsoft, AWS, Google, Cloudflare, and Meta.
Why Rust Wins for Developer Tools
The technical case for Rust in dev tooling comes down to a combination no other language offers: C-level performance with compile-time memory safety. Microsoft’s security research found that 70% of all vulnerabilities in C/C++ codebases stem from memory safety issues – use-after-free bugs, buffer overflows, null pointer dereferences. Rust eliminates these entire categories of bugs at compile-time, with zero runtime overhead.
The performance numbers are concrete. Benchmarks show Rust HTTP servers handling 43% more requests per second while using 18% less memory than equivalent C++ implementations. RustPython leverages Rust’s zero-cost abstractions to optimize Python bytecode interpretation, and fresh’s lazy-loading piece tree can open a 2GB log file with ANSI color codes in 600ms using just 36MB of RAM – a task that crashes many traditional editors at 100MB.
For long-running developer tools like editors, build systems, and language servers, this combination is critical. A memory leak in your text editor means lost work and frustrated developers. A data race in your build system means non-deterministic failures. Rust’s borrow checker and ownership model prevent both at compile-time, before the tool ever ships.
Microsoft Signals the Future
The clearest signal of where this is heading comes from Microsoft. Distinguished engineer Galen Hunt announced a goal to “eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,” focusing on AI-driven migration tools and gradual rewrites rather than wholesale replacements. Windows 11 already includes Rust in kernel components, and Microsoft is investing heavily in tooling like RustMap, which uses GPT-4o to translate C code to idiomatic Rust.
Google’s security team reached a similar conclusion, recommending incremental migration to memory-safe languages over maintaining legacy C/C++ codebases. The industry consensus is forming: for new infrastructure and developer tooling, Rust is the default choice. For existing codebases, migration is a question of when, not if.
The Debate: Is the Rewrite Trend Justified?
Not everyone is sold. Rust has a notoriously steep learning curve – ownership, lifetimes, and the borrow checker represent genuinely new concepts for most developers. Build times are slower than C++ due to aggressive compile-time checks. The talent pool is smaller, and “Rust evangelism” has become a running joke in some communities.
But for developer tools specifically, the trade-offs make sense. These are tools that thousands or millions of developers rely on daily. An editor that crashes loses work. A compiler with undefined behavior ships bugs. A package manager with memory leaks frustrates users. Rust’s guarantees – memory safety without garbage collection, fearless concurrency, zero-cost abstractions – solve exactly the problems that matter most for infrastructure.
The simultaneous GitHub trending of RustPython, fresh, and other Rust infrastructure projects isn’t hype. It’s pattern recognition. Developers building tools for developers are making calculated bets on reliability and performance. When your users are technical and your workloads are demanding, Rust delivers.
What’s Next
If the current trajectory holds, expect to see more core developer tools migrating to Rust in 2026. Build systems, package managers, language servers, and compilers are all prime candidates. The Rust ecosystem continues to mature – better error messages, more libraries, smoother tooling – making adoption easier for teams considering the switch.
For individual developers, the question is less “will Rust become dominant” and more “when should I learn it?” If you’re building developer tools, infrastructure, or performance-critical systems, the answer is now. The industry has already made its choice. Three trending projects in late December 2025 were just the latest proof.
