Welcome to Rust

An introduction to the language and a brief history lesson.

Rust, aka rust-lang is a programming language that was thought out and first implemented at Mozilla, as an alternative to C/C++ for use in developing the Firefox browser and many other apps. The main aim of the language has been to make system programming safer and a tad bit easier, evolving into a state of the art tool that has now been adopted for use at some of the largest software engineering companies, including AWS, Google and Microsoft. Rust has also set a streak of 6 years being the most loved programming language among developers surveyed by Stack Overflow and has gained quite a lot of mass appeal and a large pool of contributors as a result.

Programmers who advocate for rust-lang call themselves "Rustaceans", a play on the words "Crustaceans" used to refer to hard-shelled amphibians such as crabs or lobsters and thus, the community adopted Ferris the crab as it's mascot. The community is pretty large and diverse, with a presence on various platforms such as twitter, reddit and more.

Over the past 3 years, rust-lang has come a long way. From being dismissed as mere hogwash and "It is just a fad" to actually seeing immense interest among developers and engineering managers alike, to finally being in a position where critical computing infrastructure is being built and rewritten to make the best use of the growing capabilities of the language and the libraries written in it.

In this course, I have curated content from across the interwebs to give you a primer on the language and to help you upskill yourself with knowledge of how and where it could become a great way to solve problems, so let us get started.