Today’s economy has created a new class of worker: the IT consultant. This lone warrior often manages multiple websites, responding to anything from outages to update requests and every code debug in between. If one can manage the never ending onslaught of servers, API calls and transactions these sites rely on each day, it’s a pretty decent living. The key is removing all the menial work that overwhelms and stifles productivity.

At the intersection of safety and performance, you’ll find Rust — Stack Overflow’s “most-loved programming language” for three years running. Rust provides the control needed to ensure optimal performance while offering relatively high abstractions at zero-cost.

I use performance monitoring tools primarily to find slow and buggy code. At the start of development, I typically use the tools more for finding software bugs. Once the codebase is at a relatively stable phase, then I shift my focus toward finding less performant code. Which is why I turn to tools like Retrace to help with profiling for better performance.