Go vs. Rust for High Load Web Services - The GC Tax and Compile Time Trade Offs

Description

This deep dive analyzes the technical realities behind migrating high-load web services from Go to Rust. We move beyond surface-level comparisons to explore the specific limitations of Go's garbage collector in large-heap scenarios, using the famous Discord case study as a prime example of how active object scanning destroys P99 latency. The discussion explains how Rust's ownership model eliminates these spikes and drastically reduces memory footprint, leading to substantial infrastructure cost savings. Finally, we critically examine the unavoidable trade-offs, detailing how Rust shifts complexity from runtime to compile time, resulting in longer CI/CD pipelines and significant challenges for package maintainers.