Nobody Warned Me About Rust’s IDE Support. Now I’m Warning You

I’ve been writing Java and Go professionally for the past four years. Last month, I finally decided to dive deep into Rust. Everyone told me the borrow checker would be the hard part. They were wrong. The IDE tooling hit me first.

I’m still learning Rust, still working through ownership concepts, but the development experience itself has been the real adjustment. Here’s what I’m dealing with.

Compile Times Are Not What I Expected

My first proper Rust project is a REST API with authentication, database connections, and some background jobs. Nothing fancy. Clean build time? 3 minutes 47 seconds. For context, my Go services of similar complexity build in 6–9 seconds. My Spring Boot apps take maybe 15 seconds with Gradle.

// Basic REST endpoint I wrote yesterday
use axum::{Router, routing::get, Json};
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct User {
    id: i64,
    email: String,
    name: String,
}

async fn get_user() -> Json<User> {
    Json(User {
        id: 1,
        email: "[email protected]".to_string(),
        name: "Test User".to_string(),
    })
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let app = Router::new().route("/user", get().to(get_user));
    
    axum::Server::bind(&"0.0.0.0:3000".parse().unwrap())
        .serve(app.into_make_service())
        .await
        .unwrap();
}

The compilation flow explains it:

Java (JIT):              Go (Fast):               Rust (Thorough):
Source -> Bytecode      Source -> Machine        Source -> HIR -> MIR -> LLVM -> Machine
   |                         |                        |
   v                         v                        v
Quick compile           Single pass              Multiple optimization passes
Runtime JIT             Type checking            Borrow checking + monomorphization

rust-analyzer: Powerful But Heavy

I’m running VS Code with rust-analyzer. My project is around 15k lines now. The language server is consistently using 2.8GB of RAM. Sometimes it spikes to 4GB during heavy refactoring. My Go projects with gopls? Around 600–800MB. IntelliJ with my Java services? Maybe 1.5GB total including the IDE itself.

Here’s what rust-analyzer is doing under the hood:

Your Keystrokes
    |
    v
rust-analyzer LSP
    |
    |---> Parse syntax tree
    |---> Expand macros
    |---> Run type inference
    |---> Check borrow rules
    |---> Resolve trait implementations
    |---> Generate completions
    |
    v
IDE Updates (200-500ms later)

The Macro Expansion Problem

I’m still wrapping my head around macros, but I’ve noticed something. Every time I use #[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)], my IDE lags for a second.

use serde::{Serialize, Deserialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone)]
struct ApiResponse {
    status: String,
    data: Vec<UserData>,
    metadata: ResponseMetadata,
}

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug, Clone)]
struct UserData {
    user_id: i64,
    profile: UserProfile,
    settings: HashMap<String, String>,
}

These simple derives generate hundreds of lines of code that rust-analyzer has to analyze. Coming from Go’s straightforward struct tags or Java’s annotations, this feels heavier.

Actual Numbers From My Machine

I ran some tests on my development machine (Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB RAM):

Project Indexing on Open:

Java (IntelliJ, Spring Boot project): 14 seconds
Go (VS Code + gopls): 5 seconds
Rust (VS Code + rust-analyzer): 41 seconds

Incremental Compilation After Small Change:

Java (Gradle): 2.1 seconds
Go: 0.6 seconds
Rust (cargo): 9.3 seconds

IDE Autocomplete Latency:

Java: 40–80ms
Go: 20–50ms
Rust: 180–600ms (depends on context)

Generic Types Make Everything Slower

I’m learning about Rust’s trait system. It’s powerful, but the IDE struggles with deeply generic code.

fn process_data<T, E>(
    items: Vec<T>,
    processor: impl Fn(T) -> Result<T, E>
) -> Result<Vec<T>, E>
where
    T: Clone + Debug + Serialize,
    E: Debug,
{
    items.into_iter()
        .map(processor)
        .collect()
}

When I hover over variables in this function, rust-analyzer takes 300–400ms to show me the type information. In Go, this would be instant because the type system is simpler.

The IDE has to:

Analyze Generic Bounds
    |
    v
Resolve Trait Implementations
    |
    v
Check Lifetime Constraints
    |
    v
Monomorphize Types
    |
    v
Display Result

What I’m Learning to Do Differently

After a month of frustration, I’ve adapted my workflow: Use cargo check during active development. It skips code generation and runs 4x faster than cargo build. Errors are the same.

Split files aggressively. I keep modules under 3000 lines. rust-analyzer handles smaller files much better.

Restart the language server when it gets sluggish. In VS Code: Cmd+Shift+P, then “rust-analyzer: Restart server”. I do this 2–3 times per day.

Turn off auto-save compilation checks. I manually run cargo check when I want feedback instead of on every file save.

Keep dependency counts reasonable. Each crate adds to the analysis burden. I’ve learned to think twice before adding another dependency.

Still Worth It?

I’m only a month into serious Rust development. The IDE situation is definitely the most frustrating part so far, more than lifetimes or the borrow checker.

But I’m seeing why people love this language. The compiler catches bugs that would have been production issues in my Go services. The performance is genuinely better than anything I’ve written in Java. The type system, once you get past the IDE lag, actually prevents entire classes of errors.

Would I use Rust for everything? No. My Go services are still perfect for most web APIs where development speed matters. But for CLI tools, systems programming, or anywhere performance and reliability are critical, I’m starting to see why Rust makes sense.

Just be ready for your development workflow to change. The tools work, but they demand more from your machine and your patience than Java or Go ever did.

If you’ve been working with Rust longer than me and have found better workarounds for these IDE issues, I’d genuinely appreciate hearing about them in the comments. Still learning here.