The difference between Rust and JavaScript or other scripting languages

[An excerpt from the Rust book]

"...If you’re more familiar with a dynamic language, such as Ruby, Python, or JavaScript, you might not be used to compiling and running a program as separate steps. Rust is an ahead-of-time compiled language, meaning you can compile a program and give the executable to someone else, and they can run it even without having Rust installed. If you give someone a .rb, .py, or .js file, they need to have a Ruby, Python, or JavaScript implementation installed (respectively). But in those languages, you only need one command to compile and run your program. Everything is a trade-off in language design."

Here are the highlights

  • Rust compile and run are separate. Unlike Javascript, you don't compile and run your programs separately.

  • Rust is a low-level language. This means you can use it to write very low-level codes for machines, Rasberry Pi etc without so many memory worries.

  • It is statically typed, unlike JavaScript or Ruby.

  • supports cross-compilation as mentioned in the opening paragraph.

    Read more about JavaScript and Rust differences.