The Problem with Clones in Rust - Why Functional Rust is Slower Than You Think (And How to Fix It)

In this video we explore the problems with clones in rust, why it makes functional Rust code slower than mainstream GC languages, and ways to fix it.

Original blog post with all diagrams and links: https://hamy.xyz/blog/2026-02_the-problem-with-clones-in-rust

CTA: LightClone is a Rust crate that allows the type system to enforce cheap clones - https://github.com/SIRHAMY/light-clone

Chapters

00:00 - Intro
00:55 - Why Rust Clones are Different
03:20 - How much slower?
05:20 - Why GC Languages "Win" at Cloning
06:30 - How to Fix Slow Clones
09:00 - Helpful Crates
09:40 - Cheap and Expensive Cones Look the Same
11:35 - Does this actually matter for Web APIs?

Links:

- High-Level Rust: Getting 80% of the Benefits with 20% of the Pain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncHPgvhnm7k
- The Missing Programming Language - Why There's No S-Tier Language (Yet) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJXv0BjFFCc
- Why I'm Moving my Blog from F# to C# - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08EkZvkqSvU

About me: I'm Hamilton - a Technomancer building Simple Scalable Systems.

Connect with me:

- Website: https://hamy.xyz
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- Twitter: @SIRHAMY - https://twitter.com/SIRHAMY
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