New Rustacean – learning the Rust programming language

A year in, Rust is changing fast but still stable. Sponsors * Aleksey Pirogue * Chris Palmer * Daniel Collin * Derek Morr * Hamza Sheikh * Lachlan Collins * Leif Arne Storset * Luca Schmid * Micael Bergeron * Pascal Hertleif * Ralph Giles (“gillian”) * Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo * reddraggone9 * Ryan Oleos * Vesa Kaihlavirta * William Roe (Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!) Become a sponsor * Patreon.com/newrustacean * Venmo.com/chriskrycho * Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho * Cash.me/$chriskrycho * Flattr.com/profile/chriskrycho * PayPal.me/chriskrycho Contact * New Rustacean: * Twitter: @newrustacean * Email: hello@newrustacean.com * Chris Krycho * GitHub: chriskrycho * Twitter: @chriskrycho

Some things matter more than contributing to open-source software in your free time. A lot more. It’s trendy to ask for open-source work as evidence of your interest in tech and commitment to software development. Trendy and completely wrong. Companies should not demand open-source contributions from their employees, and beyond that, should learn to recognize that profit is not the most valuable thing in the world. People are. Sponsors * Aleksey Pirogue * Chris Palmer * Daniel Collin * Derek Morr * Hamza Sheikh * Lachlan Collins * Leif Arne Storset * Luca Schmid * Micael Bergeron * Pascal Hertleif * Ralph Giles (‚Äúrillian‚Äù) * Ralph ‚ÄúFriarTech‚Äù Loizzo * reddraggone9 * Ryan Oleos * Vesa Kaihlavirta * William Roe (Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!) Become a sponsor * Patreon.com/newrustacean * Venmo.com/chriskrycho * Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho * Cash.me/$chriskrycho * Flattr.com/profile/chriskrycho * PayPal.me/chriskrycho Contact * New Rustacean: @newrustacean or hello@newrustacean.com * Chris Krycho: github.com/chriskrycho, @chriskrycho

Strings &strs and Vecs and slices (and Unicode) – oh, my! Notes This episode, I take a deep dive on strings in Rust, looking at the differences between String and &str, discussing Unicode a bit, and then expanding the discussion to think about how these types relate to the types they’re built on (like Vec). Links - Strings: - The Rust Book - Rust by Example - str docs: - module - primitive type - String - module - type definition - Dereferencing - coercions - std::ops::Deref Sponsors - Aleksey Pirogov - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Hamza Sheikh - Lachlan Collins - Leif Arne Storset - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Pascal Hertleif - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo - reddraggone9 - Ryan Ollos - Vesa Kaihlavirta - William Roe (Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!) Become a sponsor - Patreon.com/chriskrycho - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho - Flattr.com/profile/chriskrycho Contact - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - GitHub: chriskrycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho

Just how good Rust is, and how you can learn it even if you’re busy. Notes Sometimes life goes crazy and I don’t have time to do all the technical writing required for a full episode, but I can’t get Rust off my mind, so I record an episode like this one. Where I talk a bit about how versatile Rust is and suggest some surprising ways you might be able to use it. Sponsors * Aleksey Pirogue * Chris Palmer * Derek Morr * Hamza Sheikh * Lachlan Collins * Leif Arne Storset * Luca Schmid * Micael Bergeron * Pascal Hertleif * Ralph Giles (“gillian”) * Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo * reddraggone9 * Ryan Oleos * Vesa Kaihlavirta * William Roe (Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!) Become a sponsor * Patreon * Venom * Dwolla * Cash.me Contact * New Rustacean: * Twitter: @newrustacean * Email: hello@newrustacean.com * Chris Krycho * GitHub: chriskrycho * Twitter: @chriskrycho

Reasoning about and using lifetimes in Rust (and why we need them) Notes Lifetimes are our way of reasoning about how long a given piece of data is available and safe to use in Rust. The reason we don't have the dangling pointer problem is that we do have lifetimes instead. They're not magic, they're just a bit of semantics and syntax that let us specify the rules for how long any given item lives, and how long references to data must be valid. Sponsors * Aleksey Pirogue * Chris Palmer * Derek Morr * Hamza Sheikh * Lachlan Collins * Leif Arne Storset * Luca Schmid * Micael Bergeron * Pascal Hertleif * Ralph Giles ("gillian") * Ralph "FriarTech" Loizzo * reddraggone9 * Ryan Oleos * Vesa Kaihlavirta * William Roe (Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!) Become a sponsor * Patreon.com/newrustacean * Venmo.com/chriskrycho * Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho * Cash.me/$chriskrycho Contact * New Rustacean: * Twitter: @newrustacean * Email: hello@newrustacean.com * Chris Krycho * GitHub: chriskrycho * Twitter: @chriskrycho

What it means to be an expression-oriented language, and how that works out in Rust. Notes Rust is an expression-oriented language. What does that mean, and how does it play out in Rust? We look at if and match blocks, discuss looping constructs, and examine functions, and then widen out to discuss how having an expression-oriented language can change the way we think about programming. Sponsors * Aleksey Pirogue * Chris Palmer * Derek Morr * Hamza Sheikh * Lachlan Collins * Leif Arne Storset * Luca Schmid * Micael Bergeron * Pascal * Ralph Giles (“gillian”) * Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo * reddraggone9 * Ryan Oleos * William Roe Become a sponsor * Patreon.com/newrustacean * Venmo.com/chriskrycho * Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho * Cash.me/$chriskrycho Contact * New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com * Chris Krycho - GitHub: chriskrycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho

Type systems: strong vs. weak, dynamic vs. static, and degrees of expressivity. Notes Talking about type systems! A broad and wide-ranging discussion about type systems in general, with specific examples from languages like PHP, JavaScript, Python, C, C++, Java, C♯, Haskell, and Rust! * What is a type system? * What are the kinds of things we get out of type systems? * What are the tradeoffs with different type systems? * What is Rust’s type system like? * What is especially attractive about Rust’s type system? A comment on the C integer/character string addition example: what’s actually happening there is that the character string is an array “under the covers,” and as such has an address. C silently switches to using the memory address, which is of course just an integer, when you try to add the two together. As I said on the show: the result is nonsense (unless you’re using this as a way of operating on memory addresses), but it’s compellable nonsense. In a stricter and stronger type system, memory addresses and normal numbers shouldn’t be addable! Sponsors * Aleksey Pirogue * Chris Palmer * Derek Morr * Hamza Sheikh * Lachlan Collins * Leif Arne Storset * Luca Schmid * Micael Bergeron * Pascal * Ralph Giles (“gillian”) * Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo * reddraggone9 * Ryan Oleos * William Roe Become a sponsor * Patreon.com/newrustacean * Venmo.com/chriskrycho * Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho * Cash.me/$chriskrycho Contact * New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com * Chris Krycho - GitHub: chriskrycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho

Sean Griffin on type systems and hopes for Rust's future Notes ----- Chris chats with Sean Griffin about the tradeoffs between mental overhead and type safety, the expressiveness of different type systems, and some of the places where Rust currently falls down. ### Corrigenda Sean noted he could be wrong about `IEnumerable

Sean Griffin on Rust, Diesel, and ORMs Notes Chris chats with Sean Griffin about his programming background and initial experience with Rust, Rust’s appeal, and what he’s doing with Diesel and some of his plans for a new web framework in Rust. Sponsors - Aleksey Pirogov - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Hamza Sheikh - Leif Arne Storset - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - Ryan Ollos - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon - Venmo - Dwolla - Cash.me Follow - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - GitHub: chriskrycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho

The value of a good community, and how you can help Rust today. Community is one of the most important parts of a programming language community, or indeed *any* technical community. In this episode, I talk a bit about what happens when you don't have a good community, how Rust's community has done well so far, and then how to keep building a good community and how to build good things *as* a community. Sponsors - Aleksey Pirogov - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Hamza Sheikh - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon.com/newrustacean - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho Follow - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - App.net: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho - App.net: @chriskrycho

Using Rust's macro system, its limitations, and its future. Because of the way macros are exported—before name resolution on crates occurs—the documentation for the macros defined in the source for this episode occurs in the MACROS section of the show_notes crate documentation, rather than within the documentation for this module. (See the Rust Book discussion of documenting macros for details.) Even so, the source is still in this module; see the implementations for details. Sponsors - Aleksey Pirogov - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Hamza Sheikh - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon.com/newrustacean - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho Follow - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - App.net: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho - App.net: @chriskrycho

Notes Last time, we looked at generics and traits at a high level. This time, we dig deeper on traits, looking specifically at std::iter::Iterator as an example of a powerful trait that can be composed across types, and then at how we might compose multiple traits on a single type. We also talk about the syntax for traits, the use of marker traits, some of the things you _can’t_ presently do with traits, and even just a smidge about the _future_ of traits in Rust. All that in less than 20 minutes! You’ll find today’s source example fairly interesting, I think: it’s just one type, but it uses almost every concept discussed on the show today! Links - Nick Cameron: “Thoughts on Rust in 2016” - “Upcoming breakage starting in Rust 1.7, from RFCs 1214 and 136” - RFC 1214: Clarify (and improve) rules for projections and well-formedness - RFC 136: Ban private items in public APIs - The Rust Book: - Traits - Trait objects (dynamic dispatch) - The Rust reference: - std::iter and std::iter::Iterator - Add - Drop - PartialEq and Eq - PartialOrd and Ord - Special traits - Trait objects - RFC: impl specialization - Aaron Turon: “Specialize to reuse” Sponsors - Aleksey Pirogov - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Hamza Sheikh - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon.com/newrustacean - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho Follow - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - App.net: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho - App.net: @chriskrycho

Notes In this episode we cover—at a _very_ high level—two more fundamental concepts in Rust programming: generics and traits. Generics gives us the abilitty to write types and functions which can be used with more than one type. Traits give us the ability to specify behavior which can be implemented for more than one type. The combination gives us powerful tools for higher-level programming constructs in Rust. Comments on source code Now that we have a handle on how tests work, we’ll use them to validate the behavior of our code going forward. This is great: we can show that the tests do what we think. To today’s point, though: we actually know even apart from whether the tests _run_ successfully that these generic functions and the associated traits are behaving as we want. Failure with generics is a _compile_-time error, not a runtime error. Sponsors - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon/newrustacean - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho Follow - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - App.net: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho - App.net: @chriskrycho

Notes All about testing in Rust! In order, we take a look at: - Why you need tests. - Unit tests in other (dynamically-typed) languages vs. in Rust. - How to write unit tests in Rust. - How and why to write integration tests in Rust. - How and why to use benchmarks in Rust. The detailed code samples for this episode are heavy on showing; because of the nature of test functions, you will be best off just reading the source rather than leaning heavily on the descriptions generated by RUSTDOC. (The descriptions are still _there_, but they’re much less useful than they have been in previous episodes.) In particular, the test module here is excluded because of the use of the #[cfg(test)] attribute marker on it. Because we are using the feature-gated benchmarking functionality, the show notes “library” can now only be compiled with the Rust nightly (as of 1.5, the version current as this episode is produced). One thing that isn’t necessarily obvious from reading the test documentation in the Rust book and Rust reference: the extern crate test statement needs to be not in this module, but at the module (lib.rs) which defines the library/crate; in this case, show_notes/lib.rs. Sponsors - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon.com/newrustacean - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho Follow - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - App.net: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho - App.net: @chriskrycho

Software developers spend a large part of our careers dealing with legacy code. But what is the _best_ way to deal with legacy code? When should you rip out the old and rewrite it, and when should you opt for smaller clean-up jobs because, however ugly, what is already present _works_? SPONSORS - Chris Palmer - Derek Morr - Luca Schmid - Micael Bergeron - Ralph Giles (“rillian”) - reddraggone9 - William Roe Become a sponsor - Patreon.com/newrustacean - Venmo.com/chriskrycho - Dwolla.com/hub/chriskrycho - Cash.me/$chriskrycho FOLLOW - New Rustacean: - Twitter: @newrustacean - App.net: @newrustacean - Email: hello@newrustacean.com - Chris Krycho - Twitter: @chriskrycho - App.net: @chriskrycho