  Historically, Fortran and C have been the default programming languages in
High-Performance Computing (HPC). In both, programmers have primitives and
functions available that allow manipulating system memory and interacting
directly with the underlying hardware, resulting in efficient code in both
response times and resource use. On the other hand, it is a real challenge to
generate code that is maintainable and scalable over time in these types of
languages. In 2010, Rust emerged as a new programming language designed for
concurrent and secure applications, which adopts features of procedural,
object-oriented and functional languages. Among its design principles, Rust is
aimed at matching C in terms of efficiency, but with increased code security
and productivity. This paper presents a comparative study between C and Rust in
terms of performance and programming effort, selecting as a case study the
simulation of N computational bodies (N-Body), a popular problem in the HPC
community. Based on the experimental work, it was possible to establish that
Rust is a language that reduces programming effort while maintaining acceptable
performance levels, meaning that it is a possible alternative to C for HPC.
