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Introduction
One of the first things you hear about when starting to learn Rust is that: it’s hard to understand, it has a steep learning curve, it’s a huge language, and so on. After a month of studying it, I can tell you. Yep, it’s hard to learn 🤷🏽♂️.
Luckily for us, not everything is lost. I will tell you some techniques that have helped me understand the language quickly.
Start small
Divide and conquer, Rust is a programming language with lots of features and new concepts to learn (especially if your only experience is with dynamic languages such as JavaScript or Python).
Instead of learning them all at once, for example, if you are not familiar with memory management, pointers, or concurrency (to name a few), pick one of these topics and don’t move to the next one until you understand it.
It will allow you to have a solid foundation for the building blocks of the language and improve from there.
Connecting the dots
If you already have experience with any other programming language, try to “connect the dots” I mean, look for similar patterns you are familiar with, and then look at how it works in Rust.
It can include functions, loops, conditionals, concurrency, or for example, I’m familiar with Go, so I try to match how it uses structs, and then I compare them with how Rust uses them.
Practice, practice, and more practice
There is no better way of acquiring a new skill than practicing every day; even 1% is better than 0%. Learn something new about Rust daily, read an article, write some code, learn about a new crate, whatever it is. The goal is to keep learning.
Build something
Like the previous point, choose a problem and solve it using Rust. It hasn’t to be a complex one, maybe a CLI tool to automatize a chore you frequently do, try to build an API, and consume it from a client using React, Vue, or any framework you like.
Remember, the main point is not to build something super-complex; choose a fun project for you and apply the new concepts you learn.
Get involved in the community
Rust has one of the most welcoming communities on the internet; there are always people ready to teach and explain complex concepts to newcomers. Find people on Twitter and follow them, to sum up, engage with the community!.
Conclusion
I’m not an expert on Rust, but I’ll be posting here my journey learning this fantastic language. In my next post, I’ll talk about the resources I’m using to master this language (some free and others paid 💸).
Stay tuned, and happy coding 👋🏽.