Motoko vs Rust for the canisters?

Developers Programs & Applications
2

I’ll let others chime in here as well, but some thoughts:

  • Rust is a systems engineering language; while it’s very powerful some of its capabilities may not be very useful for developing IC apps
  • Rust is about 10 years old at this point so documentation and libraries are more mature than Motoko
  • Motoko is purpose built for the Internet Computer; as such it will always feel “native” to IC development
  • Both programming languages are strongly typed, statically compiled languages
  • Motoko is designed to be readable and familiar to JavaScript

If you already know Rust, then going with Rust makes sense. If you are a JavaScript developer, Motoko might be an easier path. You can find Motoko examples in our dfinity/examples repository.

If you are an expert in an alternative language whose Wasm compatibility is stable for production usage and are interested in a challenge, we are actively looking for teams wanting to implement canister development kits.

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