This article explains techniques for shrinking the size of a Rust static library intended for use with Go. It details the process of removing unused code, optimizing linked sections, and converting LLVM bitcode to achieve a significantly smaller library file. The author shares practical steps and results of the optimization efforts.

The article explores the distinct philosophies and trade-offs of Go, Rust, and Zig based on the author's recent experiences. It details Go's minimalism, Rust's complexity with a focus on safety and performance, and Zig's manual control over memory management. The author aims to clarify the values each language embodies rather than just listing features.

The article details a case study where a payment service at TikTok, originally built in Go, faced CPU bottlenecks due to increased traffic. By selectively rewriting the most CPU-intensive endpoints in Rust, the team achieved double the performance and projected annual savings of $300,000 in cloud costs.