Introduction to Rust

What is Rust?

Rust is a systems programming language focused on three goals: safety, speed, and concurrency. It accomplishes these goals without a garbage collector, making it useful for performance-critical services, embedded systems, and integration with other languages.

Why Learn Rust?

Memory Safety Without Garbage Collection

Rust’s ownership system guarantees memory safety at compile time. No null pointer dereferences, no dangling pointers, no data races—all verified before your program runs.

fn main() {
    let s1 = String::from("hello");
    let s2 = s1; // s1 is moved to s2

    // println!("{}", s1); // This would be a compile error!
    println!("{}", s2); // This works fine
}

Zero-Cost Abstractions

Rust’s high-level features compile down to efficient machine code. Iterators, closures, and generics have no runtime overhead compared to hand-written low-level code.

Fearless Concurrency

The type system prevents data races at compile time. You can write concurrent code with confidence that it won’t have subtle threading bugs.

Growing Ecosystem

Rust has been voted the “most loved programming language” in Stack Overflow’s developer survey for multiple years. The ecosystem includes:

• Cargo: Best-in-class package manager and build tool
• crates.io: Central package registry with 100,000+ libraries
• rustdoc: Built-in documentation generation
• rustfmt: Automatic code formatting
• Clippy: Helpful lints for common mistakes

What Can You Build with Rust?

Domain	Examples
CLI Tools	ripgrep, bat, exa, fd
Web Services	APIs with Actix, Axum, Rocket
WebAssembly	High-performance web apps
Embedded	Microcontrollers, IoT devices
Systems	Operating systems, drivers
Blockchain	Solana, Polkadot
Game Engines	Bevy, Amethyst

Rust vs Other Languages

graph LR
    subgraph "Memory Management"
        C[C/C++: Manual]
        Java[Java/Go: GC]
        Rust[Rust: Ownership]
    end

    subgraph "Performance"
        C --> Fast[Fast]
        Java --> Medium[Medium]
        Rust --> Fast
    end

    subgraph "Safety"
        C --> Low[Low]
        Java --> High[High]
        Rust --> High
    end

Feature	C/C++	Java/Go	Rust
Memory Safety	Manual	GC	Ownership
Performance	Excellent	Good	Excellent
Null Safety	No	Partial	Yes
Data Race Prevention	No	Partial	Yes
Learning Curve	High	Medium	High

Who Uses Rust?

• Mozilla: Firefox browser components
• Microsoft: Windows kernel components
• Google: Android, Fuchsia OS
• Amazon: AWS services
• Meta: Source control backend
• Discord: Real-time services
• Cloudflare: Edge computing

Is Rust Right for You?

Rust is a great choice if you:

• Want performance without sacrificing safety
• Need to write reliable concurrent code
• Are building systems software or embedded applications
• Want to contribute to a growing, welcoming community
• Enjoy learning and intellectual challenges

Rust has a steeper learning curve than some languages. The compiler is strict but helpful. Once you “get” ownership, everything clicks into place.

Next Steps

Ready to start? Let’s install Rust on your system.