Part 3: Intermediate Rust

This part covers collections, iterators, closures, smart pointers, and concurrency—the tools you need for real-world Rust programming.

What You’ll Learn

• Working with collections (Vec, HashMap, String)
• Iterator patterns and adaptors
• Closures and capturing
• Smart pointers (Box, Rc, Arc, RefCell)
• Multi-threaded programming
• Channels for message passing
• Mutexes and shared state
• Introduction to async/await

Chapters

1. Collections - Vec, HashMap, and String
2. Iterators - Patterns and adapters
3. Closures - Anonymous functions and capturing
4. Smart Pointers - Box, Rc, Arc, RefCell
5. Threads - Spawning and joining
6. Channels - Message passing
7. Mutex - Shared state concurrency
8. Async Basics - Introduction to async/await

The Big Picture

graph TD
    A[Collections] --> B[Iterators]
    B --> C[Closures]
    C --> D[Smart Pointers]

    D --> E[Concurrency]
    E --> F[Threads]
    E --> G[Channels]
    E --> H[Mutex]

    I[Async] --> J[Futures]
    I --> K[async/await]

Prerequisites

• Completed Part 2: Fundamentals
• Understanding of ownership and borrowing
• Familiarity with traits and generics

Time Estimate

Plan for 4-6 hours to work through this part. Concurrency concepts may require extra practice.

Next Steps

Start with Collections to learn about Rust’s data structures.

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Table of contents

• Collections
• Iterators
• Closures
• Smart Pointers
• Threads
• Channels
• Mutex
• Async Basics