Rust Tutorials

Rust Tutorials Roadmap

Section 1: Introduction to Rust and Programming Basics

  • What is Rust?
    • A systems programming language.
    • Focus on memory safety, performance, and concurrency.
    • Developed by Mozilla.
  • Why Learn Rust?
    • Guaranteed memory safety without a garbage collector.
    • High performance, comparable to C/C++.
    • Excellent support for concurrency.
    • Growing community and ecosystem.
    • Used in various domains (web development, CLI tools, embedded systems, game development).
  • Setting up Your Development Environment:
    • Installing Rust using rustup.
    • Using a code editor (VS Code with Rust Analyzer, Sublime Text, IntelliJ IDEA with Rust plugin).
    • Using the Cargo build tool and package manager.
  • Your First Rust Program ("Hello, World!"):
    • Creating a new project with Cargo.
    • Understanding the main function.
    • Using the println! macro.
    • Building and running your program with Cargo.
  • Basic Syntax:
    • Comments.
    • Variables and mutability (let, mut).
    • Constants.
    • Shadowing.
    • Data types (Integers, Floating-Point Numbers, Booleans, Characters, Tuples, Arrays).
    • Printing output (println!, dbg!).
    • Getting input from the user.

Section 2: Ownership, Borrowing, and Lifetimes (The Core of Rust)

  • Understanding Ownership:
    • The core concept of Rust's memory safety.
    • Rules of Ownership.
    • The concept of "move."
  • Borrowing:
    • Creating references to data.
    • Immutable references (&T).
    • Mutable references (&mut T).
    • The concept of the "borrow checker."
    • Rules of References.
  • Lifetimes:
    • Ensuring references are valid.
    • Explicit lifetimes in function signatures.
    • Lifetime elision rules.
    • The 'static lifetime.
  • Understanding How Ownership, Borrowing, and Lifetimes Prevent Data Races and Dangling Pointers.

Section 3: Control Flow

  • Conditional Statements:
    • if, else if, else.
    • Using if in a let statement.
  • Loops:
    • loop (infinite loop).
    • Returning values from loops.
    • while loop.
    • for loop (iterating over collections).
    • Loop labels to disambiguate between multiple loops.
  • Matching with match:
    • Powerful pattern matching.
    • Handling different cases.
    • Binding values in patterns.

Section 4: Structs, Enums, and Pattern Matching

  • Structs:
    • Defining custom data types.
    • Tuple structs.
    • Unit-like structs.
    • Instantiating structs.
    • Accessing struct fields.
    • Using the field init shorthand.
    • Deriving traits (Debug, Clone, Copy, etc.).
  • Enums:
    • Defining enumerated types.
    • Variants with associated data.
    • The Option enum (handling the presence or absence of a value).
    • The Result enum (handling success or failure).
  • More on Pattern Matching with match:
    • Matching against structs and enums.
    • Using if let and while let for simpler matching.

Section 5: Functions and Methods

  • Defining Functions:
    • Function signatures.
    • Parameters and return types.
    • Statements and expressions.
  • Methods:
    • Defining functions within the context of a struct or enum.
    • The self parameter.
    • Associated functions (often used as constructors).

Section 6: Modules and the Cargo Ecosystem

  • Modules:
    • Organizing code.
    • Using the mod keyword.
    • Controlling privacy with pub.
    • Using use to bring items into scope.
    • Paths in the module tree.
  • Crates and Packages:
    • Understanding the concept of crates (libraries and binaries).
    • Packages and their role.
  • Cargo:
    • Creating and managing projects.
    • Building and running code.
    • Managing dependencies (Cargo.toml).
    • Fetching and publishing crates on crates.io.

Section 7: Common Collections

  • Vectors (Vec):
    • Creating and manipulating dynamic arrays.
    • Accessing elements.
    • Iterating over vectors.
  • Strings (String and &str):
    • Understanding the difference between String (owned, mutable) and &str (string slice).
    • String methods.
    • Working with UTF-8.
  • Hash Maps (HashMap):
    • Storing key-value pairs.
    • Inserting and retrieving values.
    • Iterating over hash maps.

Section 8: Error Handling

  • Unrecoverable Errors with panic!.
  • Recoverable Errors with Result:
    • Handling different error types.
    • The ? operator for propagating errors.
    • Custom error types.

Section 9: Generics, Traits, and Lifetimes (Deeper Dive)

  • Generics:
    • Writing code that works with multiple types.
    • Generic functions, structs, enums, and methods.
  • Traits:
    • Defining shared behavior.
    • Implementing traits for types.
    • Trait bounds.
    • Using trait objects for dynamic dispatch.
  • Lifetimes (Advanced):
    • Lifetime annotations in structs and enums.
    • Higher-Rank Trait Bounds (HRTBs - more advanced).

Section 10: Testing

  • Writing Unit Tests.
  • Writing Integration Tests.
  • Using the cargo test command.
  • Testing Private Functions.
  • Using #[should_panic].

Section 11: Smart Pointers

  • Understanding Smart Pointers.
  • Box:
    • Storing data on the heap.
    • Enabling recursive types.
  • Deref and DerefMut Traits.
  • Drop Trait:
    • Running code when a value goes out of scope.
  • Rc (Reference Counting):
    • Enabling multiple ownership.
  • RefCell (Interior Mutability):
    • Allowing mutable borrows even with immutable references.
  • Reference Cycles and Leaking Memory (using Rc and RefCell).
  • Arc (Atomic Reference Counting) and Mutex (for concurrency).

Section 12: Concurrency and Parallelism

  • Understanding Concurrency vs. Parallelism.
  • Creating Threads with std::thread.
  • Message Passing with Channels.
  • Shared State Concurrency with Mutex and Arc.
  • Understanding the Send and Sync Traits.

Section 13: Advanced Features (Optional)

  • Unsafe Rust:
    • Understanding when and how to use unsafe.
    • Dereferencing raw pointers.
    • Calling unsafe functions.
    • Implementing unsafe traits.
    • Accessing mutable static variables.
  • Macros:
    • Declarative macros (macro_rules!).
    • Procedural macros (more advanced).
  • Foreign Function Interface (FFI):
    • Calling C code from Rust.
    • Calling Rust code from other languages.

Section 14: Building Real-World Applications and Ecosystem Exploration

  • Building a Command-Line Interface (CLI) Tool.
  • Introduction to Web Development with Rust (e.g., Rocket, Actix-web, Warp).
  • Introduction to WebAssembly (Wasm) with Rust.
  • Exploring Other Domains (Embedded Systems, Game Development with Bevy/Fyrox).
  • Exploring the Crates.io Ecosystem.

Section 15: Further Learning and Community

  • The Official Rust Book ("The Book") (doc.rust-lang.org/book/).
  • Rust by Example (rustbyexample.com).
  • Rust Documentation (doc.rust-lang.org).
  • Rust Tutorials and Blogs.
  • Online Courses and Specializations.
  • Books on Rust.
  • Participating in Community Forums (Stack Overflow, Reddit r/rust, Rust Discord server).
  • Attending Conferences and Meetups.
  • Exploring Open-Source Rust Projects on GitHub.
  • Contributing to Rust Projects.