Hello World
About This Course
We will learn to program in Rust
- Work through a textbook
- Write weekly homeworks
- Peer-grade weekly homeworks
- Undergrads: Write a 1000-line project
- Grads: Write a 5-page research paper
Goal: leave as competent Rust programmer (course objectives in syllabus)
About Rust
Rust is a "systems programming language" intended as a replacement for C/C++
Rust offers a unique type system that allows static automatic memory management: mallocs and frees can be inserted by the program as needed
- The automatic memory management constraints make writing Rust programs harder than one might expect
Rust provides safety guarantees against common types of error. It also provides an "unsafe" mode to escape some of these guarantees when needed
Rust programs tend to have similar performance to C programs, similar readability to C++ programs, be harder to write than either, and to be reliable and safe
Concurrency and functional programming features are first-class in Rust
Nice module and separate compilation system with package manager
Installing Rust
Linux: install vendor package
Windows / Mac: I don't know
Install
rustuptoolNow you're platform-independent and have access to nightly, beta and stable builds
Hello World In Rust
Initialize Cargo project
Edit provided program
Build and run program
Rust Testing
Built-in (OK) support for unit tests integrated with language and Cargo
Can express positive and negative tests, conditional tests
Rust Program Documentation
Integrated doc comments as expected
Neat feature: doc tests
Integrated with Cargo
Works better with libraries than binaries
Rust Language Documentation
The course textbook
Other books (?)
"The Rust Book" online (second edition, mostly)
The API docs
Book Example: GCD
Simple command-line app
Your homework: extend it to do more things.