nostarch/introduction.md - rust-lang/book - Git at Google

 <!-- DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE.

 This file is periodically generated from the content in the `/src/`
 directory, so all fixes need to be made in `/src/`.
 -->

 [TOC]

 # Introduction

 Welcome to *The Rust Programming Language,* an introductory book about Rust.
 The Rust programming language helps you write faster, more reliable software.
 High-level ergonomics and low-level control are often at odds in programming
 language design; Rust challenges that conflict. Through balancing powerful
 technical capacity and a great developer experience, Rust gives you the option
 to control low-level details (such as memory usage) without all the hassle
 traditionally associated with such control.

 ## Who Rust Is For

 Rust is ideal for many people for a variety of reasons. Let’s look at a few of
 the most important groups.

 ### Teams of Developers

 Rust is proving to be a productive tool for collaborating among large teams of
 developers with varying levels of systems programming knowledge. Low-level code
 is prone to various subtle bugs, which in most other languages can be caught
 only through extensive testing and careful code review by experienced
 developers. In Rust, the compiler plays a gatekeeper role by refusing to
 compile code with these elusive bugs, including concurrency bugs. By working
 alongside the compiler, the team can spend their time focusing on the program’s
 logic rather than chasing down bugs.

 Rust also brings contemporary developer tools to the systems programming world:

 * Cargo, the included dependency manager and build tool, makes adding,
   compiling, and managing dependencies painless and consistent across the Rust
   ecosystem.
 * The Rustfmt formatting tool ensures a consistent coding style across
   developers.
 * The Rust Language Server powers Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
   integration for code completion and inline error messages.

 By using these and other tools in the Rust ecosystem, developers can be
 productive while writing systems-level code.

 ### Students

 Rust is for students and those who are interested in learning about systems
 concepts. Using Rust, many people have learned about topics like operating
 systems development. The community is very welcoming and happy to answer
 student questions. Through efforts such as this book, the Rust teams want to
 make systems concepts more accessible to more people, especially those new to
 programming.

 ### Companies

 Hundreds of companies, large and small, use Rust in production for a variety of
 tasks, including command line tools, web services, DevOps tooling, embedded
 devices, audio and video analysis and transcoding, cryptocurrencies,
 bioinformatics, search engines, Internet of Things applications, machine
 learning, and even major parts of the Firefox web browser.

 ### Open Source Developers

 Rust is for people who want to build the Rust programming language, community,
 developer tools, and libraries. We’d love to have you contribute to the Rust
 language.

 ### People Who Value Speed and Stability

 Rust is for people who crave speed and stability in a language. By speed, we
 mean both how quickly Rust code can run and the speed at which Rust lets you
 write programs. The Rust compiler’s checks ensure stability through feature
 additions and refactoring. This is in contrast to the brittle legacy code in
 languages without these checks, which developers are often afraid to modify. By
 striving for zero-cost abstractions, higher-level features that compile to
 lower-level code as fast as code written manually, Rust endeavors to make safe
 code be fast code as well.

 The Rust language hopes to support many other users as well; those mentioned
 here are merely some of the biggest stakeholders. Overall, Rust’s greatest
 ambition is to eliminate the trade-offs that programmers have accepted for
 decades by providing safety *and* productivity, speed *and* ergonomics. Give
 Rust a try and see if its choices work for you.

 ## Who This Book Is For

 This book assumes that you’ve written code in another programming language but
 doesn’t make any assumptions about which one. We’ve tried to make the material
 broadly accessible to those from a wide variety of programming backgrounds. We
 don’t spend a lot of time talking about what programming *is* or how to think
 about it. If you’re entirely new to programming, you would be better served by
 reading a book that specifically provides an introduction to programming.

 ## How to Use This Book

 In general, this book assumes that you’re reading it in sequence from front to
 back. Later chapters build on concepts in earlier chapters, and earlier
 chapters might not delve into details on a particular topic but will revisit
 the topic in a later chapter.

 You’ll find two kinds of chapters in this book: concept chapters and project
 chapters. In concept chapters, you’ll learn about an aspect of Rust. In project
 chapters, we’ll build small programs together, applying what you’ve learned so
 far. Chapters 2, 12, and 20 are project chapters; the rest are concept chapters.

 Chapter 1 explains how to install Rust, how to write a “Hello, world!” program,
 and how to use Cargo, Rust’s package manager and build tool. Chapter 2 is a
 hands-on introduction to writing a program in Rust, having you build up a
 number guessing game. Here we cover concepts at a high level, and later
 chapters will provide additional detail. If you want to get your hands dirty
 right away, Chapter 2 is the place for that. Chapter 3 covers Rust features
 that are similar to those of other programming languages, and in Chapter 4
 you’ll learn about Rust’s ownership system. If you’re a particularly meticulous
 learner who prefers to learn every detail before moving on to the next, you
 might want to skip Chapter 2 and go straight to Chapter 3, returning to Chapter
 2 when you’d like to work on a project applying the details you’ve learned.

 Chapter 5 discusses structs and methods, and Chapter 6 covers enums, `match`
 expressions, and the `if let` control flow construct. You’ll use structs and
 enums to make custom types in Rust.

 In Chapter 7, you’ll learn about Rust’s module system and about privacy rules
 for organizing your code and its public Application Programming Interface
 (API). Chapter 8 discusses some common collection data structures that the
 standard library provides, such as vectors, strings, and hash maps. Chapter 9
 explores Rust’s error-handling philosophy and techniques.

 Chapter 10 digs into generics, traits, and lifetimes, which give you the power
 to define code that applies to multiple types. Chapter 11 is all about testing,
 which even with Rust’s safety guarantees is necessary to ensure your program’s
 logic is correct. In Chapter 12, we’ll build our own implementation of a subset
 of functionality from the `grep` command line tool that searches for text
 within files. For this, we’ll use many of the concepts we discussed in the
 previous chapters.

 Chapter 13 explores closures and iterators: features of Rust that come from
 functional programming languages. In Chapter 14, we’ll examine Cargo in more
 depth and talk about best practices for sharing your libraries with others.
 Chapter 15 discusses smart pointers that the standard library provides and the
 traits that enable their functionality.

 In Chapter 16, we’ll walk through different models of concurrent programming
 and talk about how Rust helps you to program in multiple threads fearlessly.
 Chapter 17 looks at how Rust idioms compare to object-oriented programming
 principles you might be familiar with.

 Chapter 18 is a reference on patterns and pattern matching, which are powerful
 ways of expressing ideas throughout Rust programs. Chapter 19 contains a
 smorgasbord of advanced topics of interest, including unsafe Rust, macros, and
 more about lifetimes, traits, types, functions, and closures.

 In Chapter 20, we’ll complete a project in which we’ll implement a low-level
 multithreaded web server!

 Finally, some appendices contain useful information about the language in a
 more reference-like format. Appendix A covers Rust’s keywords, Appendix B
 covers Rust’s operators and symbols, Appendix C covers derivable traits
 provided by the standard library, Appendix D covers some useful development
 tools, and Appendix E explains Rust editions.

 There is no wrong way to read this book: if you want to skip ahead, go for it!
 You might have to jump back to earlier chapters if you experience any
 confusion. But do whatever works for you.

 An important part of the process of learning Rust is learning how to read the
 error messages the compiler displays: these will guide you toward working code.
 As such, we’ll provide many examples that don’t compile along with the error
 message the compiler will show you in each situation. Know that if you enter
 and run a random example, it may not compile! Make sure you read the
 surrounding text to see whether the example you’re trying to run is meant to
 error. In most situations, we’ll lead you to the correct version of any code
 that doesn’t compile.

 ## Resources and How to Contribute to This Book

 This book is open source. If you find an error, please don’t hesitate to file
 an issue or send a pull request on GitHub at
 *https://github.com/rust-lang/book/*. Please see *CONTRIBUTING.md* at
 *https://github.com/rust-lang/book/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md* for more details.

 The source code for the examples in this book, errata, and other information
 are available at *https://www.nostarch.com/Rust2021/*.
	<!-- DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE.

	This file is periodically generated from the content in the `/src/`
	directory, so all fixes need to be made in `/src/`.
	-->

	[TOC]

	# Introduction

	Welcome to The Rust Programming Language, an introductory book about Rust.
	The Rust programming language helps you write faster, more reliable software.
	High-level ergonomics and low-level control are often at odds in programming
	language design; Rust challenges that conflict. Through balancing powerful
	technical capacity and a great developer experience, Rust gives you the option
	to control low-level details (such as memory usage) without all the hassle
	traditionally associated with such control.

	## Who Rust Is For

	Rust is ideal for many people for a variety of reasons. Let’s look at a few of
	the most important groups.

	### Teams of Developers

	Rust is proving to be a productive tool for collaborating among large teams of
	developers with varying levels of systems programming knowledge. Low-level code
	is prone to various subtle bugs, which in most other languages can be caught
	only through extensive testing and careful code review by experienced
	developers. In Rust, the compiler plays a gatekeeper role by refusing to
	compile code with these elusive bugs, including concurrency bugs. By working
	alongside the compiler, the team can spend their time focusing on the program’s
	logic rather than chasing down bugs.

	Rust also brings contemporary developer tools to the systems programming world:

	* Cargo, the included dependency manager and build tool, makes adding,
	compiling, and managing dependencies painless and consistent across the Rust
	ecosystem.
	* The Rustfmt formatting tool ensures a consistent coding style across
	developers.
	* The Rust Language Server powers Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
	integration for code completion and inline error messages.

	By using these and other tools in the Rust ecosystem, developers can be
	productive while writing systems-level code.

	### Students

	Rust is for students and those who are interested in learning about systems
	concepts. Using Rust, many people have learned about topics like operating
	systems development. The community is very welcoming and happy to answer
	student questions. Through efforts such as this book, the Rust teams want to
	make systems concepts more accessible to more people, especially those new to
	programming.

	### Companies

	Hundreds of companies, large and small, use Rust in production for a variety of
	tasks, including command line tools, web services, DevOps tooling, embedded
	devices, audio and video analysis and transcoding, cryptocurrencies,
	bioinformatics, search engines, Internet of Things applications, machine
	learning, and even major parts of the Firefox web browser.

	### Open Source Developers

	Rust is for people who want to build the Rust programming language, community,
	developer tools, and libraries. We’d love to have you contribute to the Rust
	language.

	### People Who Value Speed and Stability

	Rust is for people who crave speed and stability in a language. By speed, we
	mean both how quickly Rust code can run and the speed at which Rust lets you
	write programs. The Rust compiler’s checks ensure stability through feature
	additions and refactoring. This is in contrast to the brittle legacy code in
	languages without these checks, which developers are often afraid to modify. By
	striving for zero-cost abstractions, higher-level features that compile to
	lower-level code as fast as code written manually, Rust endeavors to make safe
	code be fast code as well.

	The Rust language hopes to support many other users as well; those mentioned
	here are merely some of the biggest stakeholders. Overall, Rust’s greatest
	ambition is to eliminate the trade-offs that programmers have accepted for
	decades by providing safety and productivity, speed and ergonomics. Give
	Rust a try and see if its choices work for you.

	## Who This Book Is For

	This book assumes that you’ve written code in another programming language but
	doesn’t make any assumptions about which one. We’ve tried to make the material
	broadly accessible to those from a wide variety of programming backgrounds. We
	don’t spend a lot of time talking about what programming is or how to think
	about it. If you’re entirely new to programming, you would be better served by
	reading a book that specifically provides an introduction to programming.

	## How to Use This Book

	In general, this book assumes that you’re reading it in sequence from front to
	back. Later chapters build on concepts in earlier chapters, and earlier
	chapters might not delve into details on a particular topic but will revisit
	the topic in a later chapter.

	You’ll find two kinds of chapters in this book: concept chapters and project
	chapters. In concept chapters, you’ll learn about an aspect of Rust. In project
	chapters, we’ll build small programs together, applying what you’ve learned so
	far. Chapters 2, 12, and 20 are project chapters; the rest are concept chapters.

	Chapter 1 explains how to install Rust, how to write a “Hello, world!” program,
	and how to use Cargo, Rust’s package manager and build tool. Chapter 2 is a
	hands-on introduction to writing a program in Rust, having you build up a
	number guessing game. Here we cover concepts at a high level, and later
	chapters will provide additional detail. If you want to get your hands dirty
	right away, Chapter 2 is the place for that. Chapter 3 covers Rust features
	that are similar to those of other programming languages, and in Chapter 4
	you’ll learn about Rust’s ownership system. If you’re a particularly meticulous
	learner who prefers to learn every detail before moving on to the next, you
	might want to skip Chapter 2 and go straight to Chapter 3, returning to Chapter
	2 when you’d like to work on a project applying the details you’ve learned.

	Chapter 5 discusses structs and methods, and Chapter 6 covers enums, `match`
	expressions, and the `if let` control flow construct. You’ll use structs and
	enums to make custom types in Rust.

	In Chapter 7, you’ll learn about Rust’s module system and about privacy rules
	for organizing your code and its public Application Programming Interface
	(API). Chapter 8 discusses some common collection data structures that the
	standard library provides, such as vectors, strings, and hash maps. Chapter 9
	explores Rust’s error-handling philosophy and techniques.

	Chapter 10 digs into generics, traits, and lifetimes, which give you the power
	to define code that applies to multiple types. Chapter 11 is all about testing,
	which even with Rust’s safety guarantees is necessary to ensure your program’s
	logic is correct. In Chapter 12, we’ll build our own implementation of a subset
	of functionality from the `grep` command line tool that searches for text
	within files. For this, we’ll use many of the concepts we discussed in the
	previous chapters.

	Chapter 13 explores closures and iterators: features of Rust that come from
	functional programming languages. In Chapter 14, we’ll examine Cargo in more
	depth and talk about best practices for sharing your libraries with others.
	Chapter 15 discusses smart pointers that the standard library provides and the
	traits that enable their functionality.

	In Chapter 16, we’ll walk through different models of concurrent programming
	and talk about how Rust helps you to program in multiple threads fearlessly.
	Chapter 17 looks at how Rust idioms compare to object-oriented programming
	principles you might be familiar with.

	Chapter 18 is a reference on patterns and pattern matching, which are powerful
	ways of expressing ideas throughout Rust programs. Chapter 19 contains a
	smorgasbord of advanced topics of interest, including unsafe Rust, macros, and
	more about lifetimes, traits, types, functions, and closures.

	In Chapter 20, we’ll complete a project in which we’ll implement a low-level
	multithreaded web server!

	Finally, some appendices contain useful information about the language in a
	more reference-like format. Appendix A covers Rust’s keywords, Appendix B
	covers Rust’s operators and symbols, Appendix C covers derivable traits
	provided by the standard library, Appendix D covers some useful development
	tools, and Appendix E explains Rust editions.

	There is no wrong way to read this book: if you want to skip ahead, go for it!
	You might have to jump back to earlier chapters if you experience any
	confusion. But do whatever works for you.

	An important part of the process of learning Rust is learning how to read the
	error messages the compiler displays: these will guide you toward working code.
	As such, we’ll provide many examples that don’t compile along with the error
	message the compiler will show you in each situation. Know that if you enter
	and run a random example, it may not compile! Make sure you read the
	surrounding text to see whether the example you’re trying to run is meant to
	error. In most situations, we’ll lead you to the correct version of any code
	that doesn’t compile.

	## Resources and How to Contribute to This Book

	This book is open source. If you find an error, please don’t hesitate to file
	an issue or send a pull request on GitHub at
	https://github.com/rust-lang/book/. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md at
	https://github.com/rust-lang/book/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.

	The source code for the examples in this book, errata, and other information
	are available at https://www.nostarch.com/Rust2021/.