A half-hour to learn Rust (2020)

The YouTube channel &quot;No Boilerplate&quot; turned this into a 10-minute video version, for anyone that prefers video:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=br3GIIQeefY">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=br3GIIQeefY</a>

As a recent newcomer to Rust, I find Amos&#x27; articles an indispensable source of knowledge. His post on recursive iterators [1] has been a lifesaver while I was working on my problem. Thanks, Amos!<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fasterthanli.me&#x2F;articles&#x2F;recursive-iterators-rust" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fasterthanli.me&#x2F;articles&#x2F;recursive-iterators-rust</a>

This is, more or less, how I learned Rust circa 2015 (might have been a couple years later). I quickly started to write programs like I would have in C but got completely thwarted by the borrow checker because I wanted pointers everywhere. This made me throw my hands up and leave for other languages.<p>However, 8 years later I did eventually come to love rust after learning the One Weird Trick of using indices instead of pointers.

Previous discussion with 333 comments (2021):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25610741">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25610741</a>

half an hour to learn Rust, the other half to wait for compilation.

Why do I love this language so much having never written a line of it? Something about it is just so damn aesthetically pleasing.

I know this is not going to make me an expert in Rust. That&#x27;ll probably take 10 years. But this is just the kind of thing I was looking for to get started with Rust. Thanks for sharing it here.

Helps a lot to track toolchain improvements:<p>- in distrib: cargo, analyzer, clippy<p>- others: Aquascope godbolt intellij flowistry<p>__________________________<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.infoworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;3267624&#x2F;whats-new-in-the-rust-language.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.infoworld.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;3267624&#x2F;whats-new-in-the-r...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cognitive-engineering-lab&#x2F;aquascope">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cognitive-engineering-lab&#x2F;aquascope</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intellij-rust.github.io&#x2F;thisweek&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intellij-rust.github.io&#x2F;thisweek&#x2F;</a>

Feels like every language should have an introduction like this. It&#x27;s frustrating that lang intros are either your very basic and trivial example, or a full-blown set of tutorials, nothing in-between.<p>I also chuckled at the &quot;20 minute read&quot;.

Also useful is the &quot;Learn X in Y Minutes&quot; page for Rust.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learnxinyminutes.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;rust&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learnxinyminutes.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;rust&#x2F;</a>

<p><pre><code> fn tail&lt;&#x27;a&gt;(s: &amp;&#x27;a [u8]) -&gt; &amp;&#x27;a [u8] { &amp;s[1..] } ... fn main() -&gt; Result&lt;(), std::str::Utf8Error&gt; { let s = std::str::from_utf8(&amp;[240, 159, 141, 137])?; println!(&quot;{}&quot;, s); Ok(()) } </code></pre> Sorry, `|::|&amp;(_Rust!){}?`. I know you&#x27;re sexy. But I&#x27;ll prefer my eyesight and sanity over you.

Wish there was a version of this for C++!

Can someone explain to me where the feeling_lucky variables comes from in the match example? I don&#x27;t get it. The variable isn&#x27;t defined anywhere in the relevant scope.

This might not be a popular opinion, but - I love the idea of Rust, but the language itself seems needlessly complex to me. It looks like the authors tried to cover so many esoteric usecases that the result is more like C++ than C (which is not good in my eyes).<p>One example:<p>&gt; `let` patterns can be used as conditions in `if`:<p>Anyway, this tutorial looks great, I&#x27;ll give Rust another go when I have a good project for it, but to me it seems there is a great need for a simpler language with similar memory management. Rust is just too complex, imho.

(2020)