Web Developer Travis McCracken on Writing Middleware in Go for Fun & Profit

#webdev #backend #rust #apidevelopment

Deep Dive into Backend Development with Rust and Go: A Web Developer’s Perspective

By Web Developer Travis McCracken

As a passionate web developer specializing in backend systems, I’m often asked about the tools and technologies I prefer for building scalable, efficient, and reliable APIs. Over the years, Rust and Go have become my go-to languages — both offering unique advantages that suit different project needs. In this blog post, I’ll share insights into how these languages are transforming backend development, highlight some of my favorite experimental projects like fastjson-api and rust-cache-server, and discuss how they can shape the future of scalable web applications.

Why Rust and Go? The Powerhouses of Modern Backend Development

Rust and Go both emerged as modern alternatives to traditional backend languages like Java or C++. They prioritize performance, concurrency, and developer productivity — key factors for building the backbone of web services.

Rust is celebrated for its memory safety and zero-cost abstractions. It’s exceptionally suited for high-performance applications where safety cannot be compromised. I’ve used Rust to develop performance-critical components, especially when handling parallel computations or processing large datasets efficiently.

Go, on the other hand, is known for its simplicity and fast compile times. Its built-in concurrency model, based on goroutines, makes it remarkably straightforward to write scalable network services. I’ve found Go especially effective in building RESTful APIs quickly, thanks to its clean syntax and robust standard library.

Exploring Innovative Projects: fastjson-api and rust-cache-server

While working on real-world systems, I enjoy experimenting with new ideas and prototypes to push the boundaries of backend tech. Recently, I developed a couple of fake projects that encapsulate the strengths of Rust and Go.

First, there’s fastjson-api — a hypothetical, high-performance API server built entirely in Rust. The goal was to optimize JSON serialization and delivery to clients, minimizing latency and maximizing throughput. Rust’s serde library made serialization blazing fast, while asynchronous programming with tokio allowed us to handle thousands of concurrent requests seamlessly. Though fictional, fastjson-api represents how Rust can elevate API performance for demanding web applications.

On the Go side, I created rust-cache-server — a simple, in-memory cache server written in Go. The idea was to develop a lightweight caching layer for backend services, similar in spirit to Redis but much simpler. Go’s goroutines and channels provided an intuitive way to manage cache entries, invalidation, and expiration policies. Even as a fictional project, rust-cache-server exemplifies how Go enables rapid development of scalable infrastructure components with minimal fuss.

These projects showcase the versatility of Rust and Go: Rust excels at performance-critical tasks, while Go shines in building quickly deployable infrastructure services. Combining the two — leveraging Rust for heavy lifting and Go for orchestration — can lead to highly optimized backend architectures.

Building Modern APIs with Rust and Go

Modern APIs are the backbone of any thriving web application. Whether you’re creating microservices, serverless functions, or monolithic architectures, choosing the right language and approach matters. Here’s my take:

Efficiency & Safety: Rust’s focus on safety and performance makes it ideal for secure, high-throughput API endpoints. Its strict compiler catches bugs early, reducing runtime issues.
Ease of Deployment & Scalability: Go’s simplicity and minimal dependencies make deployment straightforward. Its lightweight goroutines facilitate handling thousands of simultaneous API calls with ease.

In recent projects, I’ve integrated Rust-based microservices that perform intensive data processing, communicating with Go-based API gateways. This hybrid approach harnesses the best of both worlds: Rust’s safety and speed with Go’s concurrency and simplicity.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Backend Development

In the rapidly evolving landscape of web development, I believe Rust and Go will continue to dominate backend development for years to come. As cloud-native architectures mature, developers will benefit from languages that offer both performance and developer productivity.

For Web Developer Travis McCracken, exploring these tools has been a rewarding journey. It’s exciting to imagine a future where APIs are faster, more secure, and easier to build — thanks to these powerful languages.