this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
310 points (94.3% liked)
Technology
63009 readers
3545 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe give it a try; it's my favorite language to write programs in now, it has an extremely good standard library, and for everything else there's a mass of high quality crates, its build system is actually competent and makes compiling on Windows or Linux trivial, plus many, many more quality of life features.
If Rust had been around when I was an underclassman, I would have been totally locked into the full CompSci track. Instead, I got introduced to Java and C (and calculus…) and that looked like a nightmare compared to what I had been playing with in JS/Python land, so I noped on out of there and got a Comp Sci Lite degree.
Years later, I’m just completely in love with Rust.
I'm currently an underclassman and my OS class has a few assignments that let you choose to use c or rust. You convinced me to try rust
Hell yes! That was the point of my rambling though I never quite got there. I was wondering if curriculums had caught up yet, to at least look at the modern system languages. Sounds like you’re at a good program.
Yes it's on my infinite todo list. I'm just being too much of a curmudgeon about the available textbooks, and had a sinking feeling when the main one didn't get "hello world" out of the way on page 1, and shift to the specifics of the language.
Rust By Example is very good for showing the ropes in a very practical way, that's how I got up and running with it.
Secondly is the O’Reilly book Programming Rust, which is probably closer to what you want, it explains the actual technical details of much of the language, and to me seems written for an audience that already knows programming. Lastly would be Rust for Rustaceans by No Starch Press, if you actually do want to pursue Rust further, as it discusses very, very in detail the systems of the language, and how they can be used to make something so powerful like Serde.
Thanks, Rust by Example looks ok, and I'm acquainted with one of Programming Rust's authors, which is cool. I'm currently looking at "Comprehensive Rust". All these though seem to be about the Rust software ecosystem (compilers, package tools, libraries) as much as they are about the language. I had hoped to start by just reading about the language, if something like that exists. I don't particularly want to write any Rust programs until I've finished reading some kind of language overview, which means that all the stuff about build tools are just a distraction during that stage. As another commenter in this thread said though, ecosystems and languages have become pretty much inseparable, so maybe that's why the books are that way.
This also looks interesting:
https://dr-knz.net/rust-for-functional-programmers.html
This says nothing about Rust, but it's a humorous classic. I'd be interested to know how to describe Rust in these terms.
https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
I’ve used it the last few years to do Advent of Code (https://adventofcode.com/) and that’s been fun and challenging. Definitely recommend it. Better than trolling through a book of “now do this” examples if you’ve done other languages in the past.
I know that the "project" approach to learning a language works for some people, but I've found l greatly prefer to read a book from beginning to end before undertaking any projects. It helps me start out with a clear picture. I'm finding "Comprehensive Rust" to be fairly good so far. Thanks for all the help, everyone.
Thanks, I was looking for a more straightforward academic-style textbook for non-beginning programmers, but I'll make do with what is out there.
This is what I've been going through, sold as teaching rust to people who already know other languages. I'm not very far in at all, but it seems decent? https://google.github.io/comprehensive-rust/