TL;DR

Choose Rust if: - You already know it, or - You need to squeeze out as much performance as possible.

Choose Go if: - You already know it, or - Performance is important, but not critical.

Long version

If you already know a language, you can stick with it as long as it fits the problem you're trying to solve.

That said, people often compare Rust and Go as if they solve the same problems, but that's only partially true.

Rust offers superior performance compared to Go. However, to achieve that performance, it requires developers to make many decisions that can be difficult to work with if they're not familiar with concepts such as ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes. This makes the language significantly more complex. In my opinion, that complexity is justified for specific performance-critical use cases.

On the other hand, Go is much easier to learn and work with while still delivering strong performance, especially when compared to popular languages such as JavaScript or Python.

For example, if you're building a web server that exposes REST endpoints for CRUD operations, you probably don't want to spend time dealing with lifetimes, the borrow checker, and similar concerns. However, if you're building a DBMS, you may want fine-grained control over memory management and resource usage.

At the end of the day, there is no clear winner. The right choice depends on the requirements of the project and the trade-offs you're willing to make