Rust developers are mostly satisfied with the current pace of evolution of the programming language, but many worry that Rust does not get enough usage in the tech industry, that Rust may become too complex, and that the developers and maintainers of Rust are not properly supported.
These findings are featured in the Rust Survey Team’s 2025 State of Rust Survey report, which was announced March 2. The survey ran from November 17, 2025, to December 17, 2025, and tallied 7,156 responses, with different numbers of responses for different questions.
Asked their opinion of the pace at which the Rust language is evolving, 57.6% of the developers surveyed reported being satisfied with the current pace, compared to 57.9% in the 2024 report. Asked about their biggest worries for the future of Rust, 42.1% cited not enough usage in the tech industry, compared to 45.5% in 2024. The other biggest worries were that Rust may become too complex (41.6% in 2025 versus 45.2% in 2024) and that the developers and maintainers of Rust are not properly supported (38.4% in 2025 versus 35.4% in 2024).
The survey also asked developers which aspects of Rust present non-trivial problems to their programming productivity. Here slow compilation led the way, with 27.9% of developers saying slow compilation was a big problem and 54.68% saying that compilation could be improved but did not limit them. High disk space usage and a subpar debugging experience were also top complaints, with 22.24% and 19.90% of developers citing them as big problems.
In other findings in the 2025 State of Rust Survey report:
- 91.7% of respondents reported using Rust in 2025, down from 92.5% in 2024. But 55.1% said they used the language daily or nearly daily last year, up from 53.4% in 2024.
- 56.8% said they were productive using Rust in 2025, compared to 53.5% in 2024.
- When it comes to operating systems in 2025, 75.2% were using Linux regularly; 34.1% used macOS, and 27.3% used Windows. Linux also was the most common target of Rust software development, with 88.4% developing for Linux.
- 84.8% of respondents who used Rust at work said that using Rust has helped them achieve their goals.
- Generic const expressions was the leading unimplemented or nightly-only feature that respondents in 2025 were looking to see stabilized, with 18.35% saying the feature would unblock their use case and 41.53% saying it would improve their code.
- Visual Studio Code was the IDE most commonly used to code with Rust on a regular basis in 2025, with 51.6% of developers favoring it.
- 89.2% reported using the most current version of Rust in 2025.
Go to Source
Author:
