I decided to learn the Rust language.
I don’t remember exactly when was the first time I’ve heard about Rust, I believe somewhere around 2018, but it never got my attention.
My attention got captured when I heard that the Linux Kernel is adopting Rust.
At time I was not available to experiment with a new programming language,
But I was definitely intrigued.
After a few years, Rust is showing up everywhere in my daily environment:
A bunch of excellent CLI tools:
And a bunch of others..
The Deno JS runtime is written in Rust.
The SurrealDB written in Rust.
It seems that people started to (re)write anything in rust.
Well at this point i definitely want to check out this trend.
And the final straw - some of my favorite youtubers are using and advocating rust constantly.
I found the time to learn Rust.
First thing for me was to find the best way to learn it.
I like to learn by 80% practicing and 20% reading documentation.
I stumbled across kind of a “practical tutorial” (if i may call it that) which is the:
“rust-lang/rustlings” project — A repository that teaches rust by letting the user fix compilation errors and failed unit test in various different code scenarios (called exercises) each teaching a new aspect of the language.
From the README:
Small exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code. Includes practice reading and responding to compiler messages!
It was a really good way to learn the language, everything from the code examples themselves to the comments and hints was made with care and thought.
Throughout the process I often had to take a detour in order to fill gaps in my understanding of the language, looking up things on the official Rust book, googling and gpt’ing as well.
I’m sure the creators of rustlings could make the exercises easier or provide more info and hints, I believe they chose this grain of difficulty specifically to enable curiosity and to send the user on a self-learning journey.