Rust Was Critical for SpacetimeDB

The creator of SpacetimeDB explains why Rust was the only viable language choice for building the database. Key requirements included fine-grained allocation control (transactions must complete within microseconds, ruling out garbage-collected languages like Go), and compile-time memory safety guarantees essential for a multi-tenant environment where user code runs inside the database via WebAssembly. C and C++ were considered but lack Rust's safety properties. Zig was noted as an interesting alternative but not yet mature enough on safety.