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by largePanda9 19 days ago
What would you say is a good starting point for learning Rust? I’ve been curious about it for a while, but coming from a mostly Python, I’m straight up intimidated and fear wasting time trying to learn something I won’t really ever fully be competent in…
4 comments

The article had great advice on this actually. When asked how to get into C, or whether it was more advisable to learn Zig instead, Mitchell suggested that

It’s more important to learn how computers work and make the language just a means to understanding how they work. [...] even in this age of higher level abstractions and web development, it’s still important to understand the basics of CPU scheduling, memory, cache hierarchies, file systems, disc and file access. When you work directly above the syscall layer, whether in C, Zig or Rust, it really helps you understand what’s happening[...]

The official rust book (officially available free online) is the way to good. So good I purchased it when it went paperback. It's a top tier language book.
Writing a Python extension would a good way to dip your toes into Rust, and also add a useful skill to Python programming (writing performant extensions). PyO3 is the main project, and the topic has been covered in several talks at Python conferences (check Youtube).
It does need quite a bit of time to be productive with... That being said, Rust by Example is good