Kaitlyn Zhang

Rust

Jun 12, 20262 min

Intro to Rust

  • Rust is a statically and strongly typed systems programming language
    • statically - all types are known at compile time
      • before your program runs, the compiler already knows exactly what every variable is (e.g., int) and how it behaves
      • e.g., cpp is static, python is not static (decides variable type at runtime)
    • strongly - types are designed to make it harder to write incorrect programs
    • systems - systems programming is about coding for the software that interacts directly with the bare metal of the hardware (e.g., writing OS, game engines, real-time controllers for physical hardware)
  • ⚠️ Key difference btwn rust and C/C++ is that rust is safe by default
    • safe by default - languages like C/C++ are not safe by default, because they allow memory corruption if the programmer does not allocate/free memory correctly - rust prevents this by having the compiler act as an ultra-strict proofreader.
    • higher-level languages solve this ^ with a "garbage collector," which is a background process that constantly sweeps through memory to clean up unused data
  • πŸ”‘ Unifying principles behind Rust:
    1. strictly enforcing safe borrowing of data
    2. functions, methods, and closures to operate on data
      • functions - standalone blocks of code
      • methods - functions attached to specific data structures
      • closures - anonymous inline functions (e.g. python lambda)
    3. tuples, structs, and enums to aggregate data
    4. pattern matching to select and destructure data
    5. traits to define behavior on data

Operating system:

  • Rust compiler - program that inputs the human-readable Rust code (in a .rs file) and translates it into raw machine code (a binary executable) that the computer's CPU can actually understand and run
  • Package manager for rust: Cargo

Installing Rust

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
rustup component add rust-docs
  • curl: command-line tool for making HTTP requests (accessing stuff from browser)
  • -sSf:
    • -s: silent (suppresses progress bars + extra output)
    • -S: show errors (still print errors if something goes wrong ^)
    • -f: makes curl exit with an error if the HTTP request fails (e.g., 404)
  • |: pipe operator in unix - takes the output of the left command and sends it as an input to the right command
    • curl (download script) β†’ sh (run script)
  • sh: unix shell

Rust basics

https://stevedonovan.github.io/rust-gentle-intro/1-basics.html

Package manager

Cargo:

cargo new project-name
cd project-name
cargo add package-name
cargo build
cargo run