Abstract
Can you build mission-critical, high-performance infrastructure software in Rust without mastering its full complexity? Yes, you can — and I’ll show you how.
In this talk, I’ll share how I wrote (and still maintain!) a rock-solid infrastructure system for a 1,400-person hospital — in Rust — using what I affectionately call “just the friendly parts.” It manages employee lifecycles, synchronizes user data across 20+ proprietary systems, and ensures real-time legal compliance for medical qualifications — all with flawless uptime for over three years.
The architecture is lean: SQLite, Rocket, and not much else. Inspired by the philosophy behind “Building the Hundred-Year Web Service”, this system favors simplicity, stability, and
transparency over clever abstractions. This makes it not only reliable but also easy to evolve — and easy to understand for any developer familiar with high-level imperative programming.
We’ll explore what I call “15% Rust”: a subset of the language that skips over complex features like generics, trait bounds, interior mutability, lifetimes, and smart pointers. I’ll highlight how this feature selection aligns naturally with application-level development, in contrast to the systems-level capabilities Rust is known for.
We’ll also acknowledge a few unavoidable edge cases — advanced topics that sneak into application code whether we like it or not. Concepts like async/await or lifetime annotations
can’t always be dodged entirely. For these situations, I offer what I call the janitor approach: a pragmatic way to handle complexity without mastering every theoretical detail. Like a good janitor who knows just enough plumbing, wiring, and carpentry to keep a building running smoothly, we can solve seemingly difficult Rust problems with partial knowledge – and some duct tape.
If you're an application developer who’s Rust-curious but commitment-shy, this talk will show you a path to safe, high-performance software — without needing to master every corner of the language. Rust can be your friend — even if you’re only using 15% of its power.
