Pixar’s Cars didn’t know this about Rust…

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All right, so, you’re sitting at your computer, plotting to make your great escape into the all-so-coveted world of Information Technology (IT) but the buzz of “what programming languages are trending” prompts halt and confusion.

You think to yourself, “just when I thought I picked the right coding boot camp, the best online course, the perfect programming language only to experience derailment, THIS… IS… MADNESS!! (Not Sparta)”.

You slump back and deflate into your computer chair, eyes synced with your mind racing back and forth with feelings of panic. The walls begin to darken, zeroing in, siloing you into thoughts of being the only one.

Whispering to yourself; “I’m alone in this”, you feel despair, quickly followed by a fit of rage while you stare at the computer screen.

Whoa, wait, let’s stop right there.

Before you flip your desk and begin smashing everything in frustration, let me tell you something… you’re not alone.

I bounced from Python, Java, and Kotlin (Kotlin was a fling, nothing serious) before I settled back into learning Python. It’s okay to “dip the toe” or (if you feel like being immature) “give it just the tip” when learning a language.

With there being many programming languages in the world, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So, in short, go for the language that would best suit you, which may be the language we’re talking about today, Rust.

Rusting with Jay

What is Rust? Well, that’s a simple question and I’m glad you asked it.

Rust is the reddish-brown material that develops when something has been sitting in a garage for too long. If you’re anything like Jay Leno, you must have several cars sitting so long that one, two, or maybe even thirty are starting to develop rust.

Okay, now with the bad rust jokes aside, it’s time to tell you what rust in the computing world is actually.

Rust is known as a general-purpose programming language designed for improved performance, safety, and concurrency (meaning you can run more than one copy of a program simultaneously).

Like Java, C#, and Swift along with several other programming languages, Rust is considered to be memory safe, meaning they all handle memory automatically instead of relying on the developer.

This means the developer (or programmer) can program away and not have to worry about having to use a garbage collector.

No, not the people who collect your trash every week or so.

Garbage collectors, when enabled, will automatically free up memory space that has been tied to objects which are no longer being used by the program.

Rust also prevents developers from running the risk of introducing certain types of bugs in relation to memory.

Memory safety bugs often tend to be an issue making this language more than secure.

So, you could think of this as one of the programming languages that stops you from having a Homer Simpson moment and yelling “D’oh”.

Kink of Rusting

Rust has been around for about 11 years or more now and hasn’t gotten the chance to get rusty since many industry leaders have adopted the use of Rust. Some are the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dropbox, and Cloudflare just to name a few.

AWS uses Rust for their CloudFront, Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as well as several other services which use Rust as well.

Dropbox uses Rust for the filing engine because this language being memory safe, prompts fewer memory error messages to deal with. Preventing developers from reenacting Britney Spears in her famous song, “Oops, I did it again”.

Since the Rust compiler will refuse any unsafe code, Cloudflare has chosen this language for this and its other security features.

Rust is normally used for projects dealing with Command Line Tools (CLI), web development, and system programming.

In the arena of data science and analytics, Rust is not up to the level of Python or R, but Rust does offer properties for creating backend systems focusing on data parallelization and low-level code optimization.

All this boils down to if this language was your side piece, it very well may be finding its way to becoming your main piece.

Facing the World with Rust

Rust has given programmers more flexibility to develop functional code without having to worry about memory issues. Due to Rust’s speed and performance, data scientists have made this language a choice for when handling machine learning and large amounts of data in a hurry.

So, if you wanted to imagine trying to rifle through a mountain of warehouse data in record time, this language has you covered.

You’re also not going to find too many cult followers as you do with Python, Java, or many of the other programming languages, instead you may find people from many avenues in the tech world joining the Rust ever-growing community.

With there being many applications and growing in popularity, Rust doesn’t seem to be slowing down or going anywhere soon. In some cases, it may find its way next to Python and Java being the top languages to learn.

Pursue or Not

Thinking about getting a job as a Rust developer or interested in making it an addition to your skillset? Either way, you can’t go wrong.

However, just knowing this language isn’t going to be good enough to land you a job. Since Rust is so close to C++, you are going to be expected to code in this language as well.

Again, you don’t have to know everything about the language, just enough to be able to move around and make sense of everything in view.

Also, depending on what your potential place of work is looking for you are going to have to be familiar with Linux and other operating systems.

Notice how you must be familiar with mentioned items and a degree was not brought up. In this day and age, being able to show you have practical knowledge supersedes having a four-year computer science degree.

Building a small list of projects using this language will boost your resume and help you stand out from the herd. Leading to rust never developing on you (sorry, I know that was bad, that was my last rust pun).

Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

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