Ralf Jung: What's the deal with unsafe Rust? [Scala Days 2025 Keynote]

Description

Rust is primarily known for its ownership-based type system that enables a low-level programming paradigm in a type-safe language. However, another key pillar of Rust is its treatment of unsafe code: while most languages tend to shun unsafe operations, often leaving them poorly specified, Rust gives unsafe operations a lot of attention, from a dedicated syntax to documentation and community norms. In this talk, I will explain this often-misunderstood aspect of Rust by talking about what unsafe Rust is, why it exists, how it is used, and how tooling and formal methods help mitigate the inherent risks of using unsafe operations. by Ralf Jung (ETH Zurich)