Rewriting in Rust: Performance, Failures, 2026 Reality Check

“Rewrite It In Rust” (RIIR) has evolved from an open-source meme into a practical migration strategy, driven by Rust’s memory-safety guarantees, competitive performance, and concurrency model, with adoption in major projects including the Linux and Windows kernels, Firefox, and Cloudflare infrastructure. Rewrites take several forms, including drop-in replacements, alternative tools with different design goals, and incremental self-rewrites, and performance improvements can be substantial, though they may result from modern redesigns as much as from Rust itself. The discussion notes practical obstacles such as large binary sizes, interoperability, platform support, team expertise, licensing choices, lengthy timelines, and the likelihood that rewrites introduce new regressions or security issues despite Rust’s safety features. Examples of abandoned or reversed efforts, including projects involving Prisma, Loglog Games, and curl/hyper, illustrate that Rust is not universally appropriate and that other languages may better fit particular ecosystems or workflows. The recommended approach is to evaluate whether a project has meaningful memory-safety, reliability, performance, or concurrency needs, favor gradual integration over full replacement, and use extensive compatibility testing to reduce risk.

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