[dpezely]

Also consider viabale options for Plan B: on the job training worked well for us even before Edition 2018 landed.

We had a senior level Java developer learn Rust on the job and be very productive within a couple of weeks. I joined shortly after and was experience with Rust. This former Java dev and I shared knowledge equally: I learned the Diesel ORM and our PostgreSQL integration from him with a few short conversations, and I perhaps helped abbreviate his remaining Rust learning curve with maybe three 1-2 minute conversations.

Another person at that same company was primarily a React developer, and he picked up Rust in fairly short order as well, but I had less involvement there.

A third person was fresh out of an extended bootcamp-style co-op program, and knew Java and React & React-Native, but this her first position after graduating. Note that she came from a non-programming background prior: goods trading industry. Also English is her third or fourth language. I walked her through potentially tricky bits of syntax and semantics (such as descructuring-bind for Structs) in an afternoon. Edition 2018 had long-since landed by her arrival, so that helped.

Modifying existing Rust code and following the patterns worked well. She started small but progressed quickly. Within a few short months, she was adding back-end API endpoints (actix-web pre-1.0) for her front-end needs, and she was creating new .rs files with most PRs merged as-is.