Why I Chose Rust for My Side Project

After years of writing Python and JavaScript, I decided to build my next side project in Rust. Not because Rust is trendy (though it is) but because I wanted to understand what memory safety without garbage collection actually feels like in practice.

The learning curve is real. The borrow checker will reject code that seems perfectly reasonable. Lifetimes will make you question your understanding of time itself. But once you internalize the ownership model, something clicks: you start thinking about resource management in a way that makes you better in every language.

My side project — a static site generator — is now faster than any equivalent I could write in Python. And I have not had a single null pointer exception, memory leak, or data race. The compiler catches everything. It is like having a very strict but very competent code reviewer who never sleeps.