Background: The current primary focus of programming language benchmarking studies in the literature is performance with less attention on safety. However, this context has a research gap because the software industry has focused more on software safety than performance to safeguard clients. This paper attempts to address this research gap by benchmarking languages in both safety and performance. Furthermore, this study includes Rust, a relatively new language with promising safety and performance features. Methods: This paper compares six prominent programming languages (in alphabetical order: C, C++, Go, Java, Python and Rust) to determine which is the best in terms of safety and performance using quantitative and qualitative methods through actual testing of code and analysis of existing information. Results: The comparisons show that Rust was the safest language, outperforming all the other languages. Regarding performance, Rust, C and C++ performed comparably to each other and generally outperformed Go, Java and Python. Conclusion: It is possible to achieve a superior balance of software safety and performance with, at worst, a minimal performance drop; as Rust clearly demonstrates.
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