Migrating from TypeScript to Rust

TypeScript excels at making JavaScript more maintainable, but teams often hit scaling challenges as their codebases grow. You might be facing performance bottlenecks, reliability issues, or maintenance overhead. Rust offers compelling solutions to these problems, but migration needs careful planning and execution. Let me show you how to evaluate if Rust is right for your team, plan a successful migration, and keep your team productive during the transition.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• How to evaluate if Rust is right for your team
• Practical strategies for TypeScript-to-Rust migration
• Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
• Ways to maintain productivity during transition

Key Differences Between TypeScript and Rust

Aspect	TypeScript	Rust
1.0 Release	2014	2015
Packages	3 million+ (npm)	160,000+ (crates.io)
Type System	Optional	Mandatory
Tooling	Rich ecosystem, frequent updates	Stable, integrated toolchain
Memory Management	Garbage collected	Ownership system, compile-time checks
Speed	Moderate	Fast
Error Handling	Exceptions	Explicit handling with Result
Learning Curve	Moderate	Steep

Why Teams Consider Rust

TypeScript is a great language, but many teams hit a wall around the 10k to 100k lines of code mark. At this scale, the codebase becomes hard to maintain and teams start to feel the pain.

The problems are clear and specific. While TypeScript has a type system, it remains a dynamically typed language built on JavaScript. Types are optional and can be bypassed using any or unknown or by freely casting between types. Without enough discipline, this leads to runtime errors and bugs.

Memory leaks and security vulnerabilities become more common, especially in large, long-running backend services. Some companies I’ve worked with needed regular service restarts to manage memory leaks.

External packages often have security vulnerabilities and need regular updates. Breaking changes are common, and packages frequently become unmaintained. Frameworks like Next.js introduce frequent breaking changes, forcing teams to spend time on updates instead of business logic.

Performance isn’t guaranteed. TypeScript is fast enough for most cases, but performance-critical applications will hit limitations. Error handling through exceptions and promises can be hard to reason about. Large TypeScript codebases become difficult to refactor and maintain, even with type safety.

TypeScript as a Bridge to Rust

TypeScript’s type system creates an excellent foundation for Rust adoption. Your team already understands static typing and values its benefits. This gives you a head start with Rust, which takes these concepts further and adds more powerful guarantees.

Understanding Rust’s Learning Curve

Rust enforces stronger guarantees than TypeScript through its ownership system and borrow checker. You’ll need to plan for an adjustment period. Most developers need 2-4 months to become comfortable with Rust’s ownership model. They’ll go through a phase of “fighting the borrow checker” – this is normal and temporary. Your job is to keep the team motivated during this learning curve. I’ve seen time and again that developers who push through this phase become the strongest Rust advocates. These developers then become valuable mentors for their teammates.

Rust Has Its Roots In Systems Programming

Rust pushes your team to understand systems concepts better than TypeScript ever required. You need to know the difference between stack and heap allocation. You’ll work with different string types like String and &str. And you should be willing to learn what a pointer or a mutex is.

These concepts might seem intimidating at first, but they make Rust fast. Rust won’t hide these details from you. The idea is that explicit is better than implicit.

Your team will write more efficient code because Rust makes these low-level details explicit and manageable.

You don’t need to be a systems programmer to use Rust and yet, you will need to learn these concepts to become proficient in Rust.

Safety and Reliability

The strict Rust compiler is your strongest ally. You can refactor without fear because the compiler catches mistakes early and consistently. You won’t deal with null or undefined errors. Error handling becomes explicit and predictable with Result.

Ecosystem Maturity

NPM gives you more packages, but Rust’s ecosystem prioritizes quality. Libraries maintain strong backward compatibility. Breaking changes are rare. Rust itself releases new editions every three years with opt-in changes.

Many Rust crates stay in 0.x versions longer than you might expect. Don’t let this worry you – Rust’s type system ensures robust functionality even before reaching 1.0. The ecosystem grows fast, and the existing libraries work reliably. For specific use cases, writing your own library is common and well-supported.

Rust vs TypeScript For Backend Services

TypeScript is a great language for backend services. A lot of companies use it successfully. There are many frameworks to choose from, like Express, NestJS, or Fastify. These frameworks are mature and well-documented.

By comparison, Rust’s backend ecosystem is smaller. You have Axum, Actix, and Rocket, among others. These frameworks are fast and reliable, but they don’t provide a “batteries-included” experience like Express.

That said, Rust’s ecosystem is growing fast and most companies find the available libraries sufficient. I personally recommend axum as it has the largest momentum and is backed by the Tokio team.

Deployment is straightforward. You can build your Rust service into a single binary and deploy it to a container or a server. Rust binaries are small and have no runtime dependencies. This makes deployment easy and reliable.

Rust is Really Fast

Teams are often shocks that Rust is so fast. They go in expecting Rust to be fast, but the reality still surprises them. You can expect an order of magnitude better CPU and memory usage if you’re coming from JS/TS. The effects of that are very real: reduced cloud costs, less hardware, and faster response times.

Most importantly, your runtime behavior becomes predictable. Production incidents decrease. Your operations team will thank you for the reduced overhead.

Planning Your Migration

Write down why you want to migrate before you start:

• What problems do you face today?
• Why will Rust solve these problems?
• Could you fix them in TypeScript instead?

This clarity helps when things get tough.

I know this evaluation isn’t easy. We often struggle to see our codebase’s problems clearly. Politics and inertia hold us back. Sometimes you need an outside perspective. I can help you evaluate your situation objectively and create a solid migration plan. This might sound expensive, but think about your team’s salaries and the cost of making the wrong decision. Good consulting pays for itself quickly. Reach out for a free consultation.

Integration Strategies

You have two main ways to integrate Rust with TypeScript.

WebAssembly

You can use WebAssembly (WASM) to compile your Rust code to a library and call it directly from TypeScript. This works great for speeding up performance-critical components. Teams often start here and expand their Rust usage as they see the benefits.

Standalone Web-Service

Alternatively, you can deploy Rust as separate services. This fits well with microservice architectures. Your TypeScript and Rust components communicate over the network. This gives you a clean separation and lets you migrate gradually.

Find A Rust Champion

You need a Rust champion in your team. This person should have some prior Rust experience and be excited about the language.

Outside help can get you started, but keep the knowledge in-house. You know your codebase and business domain best. A consultant helps with the tricky Rust parts, team augmentation, and training, but your team maintains and extends the codebase in the long run.

They need to believe in the mission.

In order to succeed, your Rust champion needs to be able to motivate the team, answer questions, and guide the team through the learning curve. They work hand-in-hand with the consultant to ensure the team’s success.

Starting Your Journey

Don’t rewrite everything at once! Start small. Maybe pick a monitoring service or CLI tool – something important but not critical. Perhaps you’ll give it a shot during a hackathon or a sprint. Build confidence through early wins.