[pretzelhammer]

Hi, author here. I enjoy reading about programming and I think it's fun, just not _as fun_ as programming. I tried to choose my words carefully because I didn't want to come across like I was bashing reading. Perhaps I should have said, "reading about programming is fun but programming is even more fun."

Learning the hard concepts in Rust is the best part, but The Book isn't going to teach you those. The Book, by design, is a very broad but shallow overview of the entire language. It'll never teach you, for example, why you can't write a self-referential struct in Rust. That's a lesson every Rustacean has to learn the hard way: by programming in Rust. And that's what I hope to encourage more Rust beginners to do: learn the hard lessons by actively programming in Rust.

[jonnypotty]

I get where you're coming here, maybe the concepts in the book weren't difficult for you, but they were for me. I tried Rust without the book and got disillusioned so quickly as I didn't have the vocabulary to understand the docs or a lot of discussion (stack overflow etc) i bought the book and it openened up so much understanding for me and now I have a couple of Rust projects on the go.

I guess it upset me a bit because I didn't find Rust fun at all until I had the book and I could see how your piece could discourage people from buying it.