Rust uses compile-time ownership rules to manage memory without a garbage collector, whereas Java, Go, and Python rely on runtime garbage collection to automatically reclaim unused memory. In Rust, the compiler enforces that each value has a single owner and is dropped when that owner goes out of scope, preventing memory leaks and data races at compile time. In contrast, garbage-collected languages defer memory management to a runtime process that periodically scans for and frees unreachable objects, which can introduce unpredictable pauses.
let s1 = String::from("hello");
let s2 = s1; // Ownership moves; s1 is no longer valid
// println!("{}", s1); // This would cause a compile error
println!("{}", s2); // This works
In Java, Go, or Python, assigning a string to a new variable creates a reference, and the garbage collector handles cleanup when no references remain.