What is Rust programming? A beginner’s guide to Rust Programming

Rust has been making waves in the industry for a long time. As a developer who has been working with C++ from the very beginning, I was also intrigued by the Rust programming language. Rust has solved many major problems faced by developers and product owners.

Rust has emerged as a formidable contender in the evolving landscape of programming languages. Whether you’re a seasoned programmer exploring new tools or a beginner taking your first steps into the programming world, learning Rust will give you an edge.

The popularity of Rust #

Developed by Mozilla, Rust has gained popularity for its focus on performance, safety, and concurrency. Its unique combination of low-level control and high-level abstractions has attracted developers from various backgrounds, making it an excellent choice for system programming, web development, and beyond.

Everyone is talking about the Rust programming language. We’ve seen that the Rust courses at Educative are also gaining popularity rapidly. So, it is safe to say that Rust can be an alternative to C++ language. Of course, it is not going to replace C++ overnight because C++ is one of the most widely used languages by programmers. Many developers compare Rust and C++ but Rust is just new in the game as compared to C++. 

However, with all the hype going around, you might ask yourself, “Why is Rust so popular, and should I be learning it?”

That depends.

If you’re a beginner who’s just exploring different languages then Rust can be a good language to learn. After all, many companies like Amazon, Dropbox, and Microsoft are already using the Rust programming language. The secret is that there are not many rust developers out there. So, in order to get an edge over other developers, learning Rust programming language can be a great idea.

Features of the Rust language#

When we delve into Rust language, we can not ignore the fact that it emphasizes security, performance, and concurrency. Rust makes programming more efficient and standardized. Its high safety standards ensure the code is of high quality and there are no mistakes. Let’s look at some of the features of the Rust language that are essential for beginners:

Improved safety#

A major issue with C and C++ is their vulnerabilities to memory corruption attacks, resulting in errors that can take weeks or even months to debug. C++ has free access to memory, which can lead to many buffer overruns and stack overflow vulnerabilities.

However, Rust has strong memory safety features that prevent these mistakes. We see programmers spending long hours looking for and fixing C++ bugs that have memory-corrupting processes.

However, with Rust, it’s safe to say that you will not be facing such issues. Rust has strong guardrails that help write programs correctly. It’s like having a safety net that keeps you from falling into the memory safety pitfalls often encountered with C or C++. You’ll find yourself facing fewer problems with Rust because it makes everything smoother. 

High performance#

Rust is a low-level language just like C and C++. Low-level codes are hard to understand and read, but this is not the case with Rust. 

Rust has a natural and intuitive syntax that makes it easy to read and write. One of the fantastic things about Rust is its similarity to C++. If you already have a codebase in C++, you’ll find it relatively straightforward to port it over to Rust. This similarity means you don’t have to sacrifice performance and safety for readability and usability. This advantage ultimately translates into lower development costs and a smoother transition to Rust.

How does Rust achieve high performance?#

• Rust eliminates the chances of memory leaks and the need for garbage collection, because it uses its allocator (malloc) to allocate memory explicitly. 

• The compiler does not have to perform a complete garbage collection because Rust uses an incremental compiler. 

• Cargo and Rust use the LLVM compiler framework to generate fast, machine-native code.

The same features that make Rust so secure also make Rust programs more performant than their counterparts in other languages. Rust has repeatedly outperformed C and C++ in several benchmarks.

That's right, Rust is fast just like C and C++. Rust also surpasses languages like Go, Java, and Python.

Fearless concurrency#

Rust can achieve everything while maintaining excellent concurrency support. It manages concurrency problems and memory safety issues through ownership and type checking.

• Ownership is a system that ensures that every piece of data has precisely one owner at any given time.

• Type checking is a system that ensures that every value has a correct and consistent type.

The majority of concurrency issues in Rust occur during compilation rather than during execution. This shows that you can identify possible concurrency problems before they become significant. Therefore, the wrong code will simply refuse to compile while giving a concise error message explaining why, rather than requiring you to spend time trying to reproduce runtime concurrency flaws.

Limitations of Rust programming#

Rust has been in the market with its first stable release since 2014, and without any doubt, it lives up to our expectations. However, like any other programming language, Rust has its own limitations. As a beginner programmer, you must understand these limitations and know what you’re getting into. Let’s have a brief look at the limitations of Rust programming.

Rust ecosystem#

Rust is relatively new compared to JavaScript, Java, C++, etc., and for that reason, the ecosystem can be limited as compared to other programming languages in the market. While Rust has a growing and vibrant community, it may not have as extensive a collection of libraries and frameworks available. This can make certain tasks more challenging or need more effort to find suitable solutions.

To overcome this issue, Rust allows its developers to create bindings or wrappers around existing C or C++ libraries, enabling them to leverage the functionality of well-established libraries in their Rust projects.

Compile time#

The one thing that can slow down your development process is compile time. Rust is a bit slower when compiling code and nobody likes to get slowed down by the compiling process. However, there  are several reasons that can slow down the process, such as:

• Extensive interference: Rust allows developers to write code with minimal type annotations, but the compiling time can increase. This is because it constantly needs to infer and verify types accurately.

• Borrowing system: Rust allows variables to be borrowed temporarily by references. Yet, there are strict rules on how borrowing can be done. So, the compilation time increases because Rust ensures the borrowing rules are satisfied.

The learning spectrum#

Because we’re talking about the beginner’s guide to the Rust language, it is important to let beginners know the learning curve of Rust. Rust is an evolving language. To master Rust, you need to learn C++ and object-oriented programming.

Rust’s compiler is known for its detailed error messages, but they can be complex and overwhelming for newcomers. It can be challenging to resolve compilation errors, especially the ones that are related to ownership and borrowing.

Wrapping up#

Learning the Rust programming language can be a great investment. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional programmer, Rust can be a great addition to your skills. Educative creates high-quality courses for programmers and software engineers. The courses are interactive, useful, and help you develop the best skillset. If you’re interested in learning Rust (the hype is real), Educative has something for you. We worked with industry experts to create interactive, project-based resources to help you learn Rust!

• The Ultimate Guide to Rust Programming

• The Pragmatic Programmers: Rust Brain Teasers

• The Pragmatic Programmers: Hands-On Game Development with Rust