Getting started with Rust

Rust has been voted the most loved programming language for several years in a row. But what makes it so compelling? It offers memory safety without a garbage collector, blazing fast performance, and a type system that catches entire classes of bugs at compile time.

Installing Rust

The easiest way to install Rust is via rustup, the official toolchain manager. Run the following in your terminal:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Your first program

Create a new project with Cargo, Rust’s build tool and package manager:

cargo new hello_world
cd hello_world
cargo run

The generated src/main.rs already contains a hello world. Let’s make it a bit more interesting:

fn main() {
    let name = "world";
    println!("Hello, {}!", name);

    // Ownership in action
    let s1 = String::from("hello");
    let s2 = s1; // s1 is moved, not copied
    println!("{}", s2);
}

The ownership system is one of Rust’s most distinctive features. Once you internalize it, you’ll find it guides you towards writing correct, efficient code naturally.