Advent of Rust: Week 1 Recap

Week 1 of the Rust guide for node.js and JS/TS developers

We’re one week (well, six days) in to the Advent of Rust and the response has been phenomenal. The series headlined node.js weekly, hit the top of the JavaScript and Node.js subreddits, got great interaction from JS Daily, and attracted a bunch of people to our Discord channel. The comments have been great!

To recap where we are right now:

Day 1: From nvm to rustup

Day 1 goes over how to get Rust and how to manage rust versions and its complementary tooling .

Day 2: From npm to cargo

Day 2 maps npm (and related) workflows to their cargo counterparts and introduces additional tools that help fill in the gaps.

Day 3: Setting up VS Code

Day 3 gets Visual Studio Code set up to perform code completion and to debug Rust. I also add some recommendations for additional plugins that help manage dependencies.

Day 4: “Hello, World” plus your first two WTFs

Day 4 gets into Rust code for the first time and then holds your hand through the first two hurdles that people get into.

Day 5: Ownership & Borrowing

Day 5 introduces Rust’s concept of ownership and touches on the borrow checker, Rust’s answer to memory safety without a garbage collector.

Day 6: Strings, Part 1

Day 6 walks you through the first hurdle introduced in Day 4. It seems basic, but the answer for how you get a real, genuine String is not as straightforward as you’d expect. This post clears it up.

Stay tuned for more!

The next several posts will go over some more of the first few hurdles and then we’ll dive into how to map JavaScript and TypeScript over to idiomatic Rust.

For updates or discussion, follow me on Twitter at @jsoverson, @vinodotdev, or join our Discord channel.