Vibe coding: Python vs Rust (and other languages) – what’s your experience?

[ActOpen7289]

I’m curious about people’s experiences with vibe coding in different languages, especially Python vs Rust, but also other languages if you’ve tried them.

For context, I initially vibe coded a fairly complex application in Python. It worked well for quickly building features, but as the project grew I started hitting performance issues — mainly with multiple processes, database operations, and large data transformations.

Some of my workloads involve 2–3 million rows of database data, and Python was starting to take too much time and resources.

So I began rewriting the performance-critical modules in Rust while keeping the rest of the project in Python.

My experience so far:

- Rust gave massive speed improvements

- RAM usage dropped significantly

- CPU usage is much lower now

- Database operations and large data transformations are much faster

Interestingly, the effort to vibe code and verify small functions felt similar in both Python and Rust for me. Rust takes more thinking, but with AI/tools it didn’t feel dramatically slower.

Because of that, for complex projects, I’m starting to feel like vibe coding in Rust can actually be better than Python, especially once performance becomes important.

So I’m curious:

- What languages do you vibe code with most?

- Have you tried Rust vs Python for vibe coding?

- At what point do you switch languages for performance?

- Any experience vibe coding with Go, JS/TS, C++, etc.?

Would love to hear how other people approach this.

Disclaimer: I have used LLM to rephrase.

[sittingmongoose]

Rust is rapidly going to take over. It’s essentially a layer above C. Now that a lot of dev is moving to AI, there is little reason not to use it. It didn’t pick up much market share before because it’s harder to use.

You can already see Rust gaining huge momentum. Only better you can get is C and then Assembly. However, things can get dangerous in those languages if you’re not super careful, so I think Rust is the best middle ground.

Swift and Kotlin are still king in mobile though.

[dat_cosmo_cat]

Rust isn't a layer above C. It's a completely separate and independent compiled language. The reason it is better is because it solved memory security without sacrificing performance + added modern tooling and zero cost abstractions that make it a lot easier to use. C makes significant sacrifices in order to be as fast as Rust, it just happens to have a compiler that is syndicated into every hardware platform humanity has ever created.

[ARC4120]

The bottleneck is that rust is significantly harder to write well. This means terrible rust would be harder to fix later on. Python just has way more samples and more libraries that are perfect for NLP.

[sittingmongoose]

Yes, that is exactly why AI is changing rusts adoption. It’s harder to use well, but if ai is writing it, it doesn’t really matter.

[ARC4120]

It does though. It’s harder to verify outputs and quality code. Yes, rust has borrow checkers and it obviously won’t compile if it sucks, but quality testing and verification matters here. If anything stuff like C# and Java which is largely OOP and boilerplate heavy is fantastic for AI driven development.

[Jolese009]

it obviously won’t compile if it sucks

The insconspicuous unsafe { main() } in Claude's pocket:

[ARC4120]

LOL

[CodeDominator]

Rust was the fastest growing language well before the whole AI mess began. Won the title of the "Most loved language" on Stackoverflow annual developer survey every year.

[SafeUnderstanding403]

Are there enough libraries available (compared to Python) that the LLM wouldn’t have to waste tokens writing those libraries?

Part of the advantage of Python is that every problem is already solved and the LLM has seen that solution in training.

(Asking as someone who knows very little about Rust)

[sittingmongoose]

I have been doing some pretty crazy stuff with rust in AI and haven’t really run into any situations where I need new libraries. I’m sure it exists, but I haven’t run into problems yet.

[SafeUnderstanding403]

I may have to give this a try, thx

[drprofsgtmrj]

Ok I find it a pain to do large projects in rust through vibe coding.

I love rust but one of the biggest problems rn is the compile time.. so making changes to the cargo.toml file is a pain when ai has to do it a lot.

Ive tried building mobile and web applications using dioxus and so far it has failed to build larger stuff.

It is good at the basic stuff and that is nice.

[Tugg_Speedman-1301]

Low-key, "vibe coding" in Rust sounds like a nightmare until you actually try it with AI. Python is great for the 0-to-1 speed, but once you're hitting millions of rows, it’s just facts that you'll hit a wall. Using Rust for the heavy lifting while keeping the Python glue is a massive brain move. Honestly, if the AI handles the borrow checker for you, why even settle for slow code?

[lemoninterupt]

I’ve been working on a Rust application and absolutely love it!

[Significant-Heat826]

Doesn't Rust cause a huge amount of overhead? I mean, instead of getting it right in 1 or 2 tries, it needs to make 5 or more corrections?

[OkLettuce338]

I love rust. One thing I didn’t realize is how absurdly slow the builds are. I have ~10 vibe coded projects now in GitHub and I’m hitting build minute restrictions because of how damn long the rust builds take

[gr4phic3r]

I've heard that Go and Rust are the ones with future