Gain insights into Rust programming fundamentals, explore its syntax, ownership, and type system, and delve into core components like memory management, traits, and generics to enhance your skills.

Rust is quickly becoming one of the most popular languages. With a strong basis as a systems and embedded language, its clean design and ergonomics makes it an emerging choice for general purpose programming tasks as well. This course will be your guide to the fundamentals of programming and Rust. Whether you have no experience or want to learn a new language, this is the place to start.

In this course, you’ll start off with the basics of the Rust programming language, learning the syntax, the philosophy of the language, and the anatomy of Rust. With that in hand, you’ll move onto some of the more unique parts of Rust, such as expression-oriented programming, ownership, and its strong type system.

In the latter half of the course, you’ll work through some of the core components of Rust such as references, memory management, mutability, traits, slices, and generics.

By the time you finish, you’ll have the foundations in place to learn more advanced concepts and take your Rust programming to the next level.

The Ultimate Guide to Rust Programming

I want to quadruple my numbers. I *could* do `* 4`, but that’s so pedestrian. I’ve already got a `double` method. So why not simply call it twice?

fn quadruple(x: i32) -> i32 {
    x.double().double()
}

fn main() {
    println!("quadruple 5_i32 == {}", quadruple(5_i32));
}

trait Double {
    fn double(&self) -> Self;
}

impl Double for i32 {
    fn double(&self) -> Self {
        self * 2
    }
}

impl Double for i64 {
    fn double(&self) -> Self {
        self * 2
    }
}


That’s great, but it only works for an `i32`. If I try to call `quadruple` on an `i64` I’ll get an error message about mismatched types. Fortunately, we’ve already learned all about type parameters. So, let’s say that our `quadruple` function works on *any* type:

fn quadruple<T>(x: T) -> T {
    x.double().double()
}

fn main() {
    println!("quadruple 5_i32 == {}", quadruple(5_i32));
    println!("quadruple 5_i64 == {}", quadruple(5_i64));
}


The compiler does not like this, but it gives us some really helpful information:

```text
error[E0599]: no method named `double` found for type `T` in the current scope
  --> src/main.rs:18:7
   |
18 |     x.double().double()
   |       ^^^^^^ method not found in `T`
   |
   = help: items from traits can only be used if the type parameter is bounded by the trait
help: the following trait defines an item `double`, perhaps you need to restrict type parameter `T` with it:
   |
17 | fn quadruple<T: Double>(x: T) -> T {
   |              ^^^^^^^^^
```

Translating this out:

  - You said that `quadruple` works on any type `T`

  - Since whoever calls this functions gets to decide what `T` is, I have no way of knowing if `T` is going to have a method called `double` on it

  - I noticed that there’s this trait called `Double` which provides a `double` method, maybe that’s what you wanted to use?

  - If so, you need to introduce a *trait bound*

Trait bounds introduce a restriction on the types that a caller can use when using type parameters. Up until now, we’ve seen *unbounded* type parameters, which mean "you can use whatever type you want." However, with `quadruple`, we don’t want to be so accepting. Instead, we want to say "OK, you can give me lots of different `T`s, but just make sure they implement the `Double` trait." And there’s a nice, easy way to do that:

Welcome to Begin Rust

Hello World and variables

Anatomy of Rust

Functions

Booleans

Conditionals

Mutable variables and while loops

Structs and ownership

References

Methods

Strings

Arrays, Vecs, and slices

Type parameters

Traits

Enums

Iterators and for loops

Early exit

What’s next?

Trait Bounds