Why you should consider teaching Rust in Uni

[Chris_Noring]

> For educators. It might be tempting to tutor students on C++ a fast and performant language and something that teaches your students about memory management. In general, it's good to consider memory and speed when coding. In the last couple of years, Go as well as Rust has become popular in the space of system programming but also used for the Web, especially with WASM (web assembly). More and more jobs exist on Rust and major companies like us are starting to use it. It's not a beginner language though and have a specific way of dealing with memory via ownership, but it's worth considering.

Resource

• What is Rust, module
• Rust Docs

Why Rust and where it shines

If you are considering Rust, you most likely have a few different applications in mind that requires speed and effective usage of memory like:

• Game engines, game engines sure demands both resources and speed.
• Websites and tools, possibly more the tooling than the websites.
• Operating systems, most operating systems at its core tend to be built-in high-performance languages.
• Microcontrollers. Close to the hardware.

The sales pitch that really sells Rust though is:

• High speed and resource usage. It combines best-in-class speed with a very low resource usage.
• Nice approach to garbage collection and safety. Rust solves problems associated with C/C++ such as garbage collection and safety.
• Strong typing system means high-safety. High safety through its strong type system.
• Ergonomics. Rust makes systems programming accessible by combining power with ergonomics.
• Cargo for packages and managing code projects. Great features like Cargo for managing projects.
• Testing built-in. Easy to test your code with no extra libraries.

Those all sounds good, but let's dive into it and learn to code in it and see what it has to offer.

Install Rust

There're a few different ways to install Rust. The recommended way is to use rustup.

If you feel like evaluating the language first, check out the playground that enables you to write code, compile and run it with no install.

Exercise - Your first Rust program

Given that you've installed Rust, you will have access to the compiler rustc, an executable you use via the command line.

• Create a file main.rs

• Give it the following content:

  fn main() {
    println!("Hello world");
  }
  

• Compile program with rustc

   rustc main.rs

• Run program:

   ./main

Here's the output:

   Hello world

The code line by line

It wasn't much code, but you now have a working application. So, what did you do?

• Entrypoint, you defined an entry point to the application a method main(). This is you telling Rust where to start the program execution. You used the keyword fn to define a function, followed by the function name "main" and curly braces:

  fn main() {}
  

• Printing to the console. You used the print macro, println! and give it a string literal "Hello world".

   fn main()
   {
     println!("Hello world");
   }

That's it, that's all you needed for a program in Rust. Next, let's look at using variables.

Variables and interpolation

You use variables in Rust to store values that you want to refer later to in code. There are different variable types you can work with, but for now, let's learn how to create a variable and use our println! macro.

You create a variable by typing:

let name = "Chris";

The above creates a variable name that you can refer later to in code.

You can now print name with the println!() macro like so:

println!("Hi {}", name);

The curly braces {} interpolates your variable name and you end up with "Hi Chris" where you to compile and run the code.

Let's actually do that next.

Exercise - modify your code

Now that you learned about defining a variable and printing it, lets modify your existing code.

1. Change app.rs to this code:

   fn main() {
     let name = "Chris";
     println!("Hi {}", name);
   }
   

2. Compile the program with rustc:

   rustc main.rs

1. Run the program:

   ./main # it's an exe file on windows

You now see "Hello Chris"

Congratulations, you've now started your journey to become a programmer in Rust, or as it's also called, a Rustacean.

Summary

You learned about Rust, why and where to use it. Additionally, you've created a program in it and you're now ready to learn more about Rust. Welcome Rustacean :)