To say that Rust is the programming language of the future, as many people in the industry have claimed, is not an overstatement. Rust has been quickly growing in popularity and demand since its official public launch in 2015, and computer programming is a highly desired skill to have in the job market today. If you’ve never taken a crack at it, this might be a great opportunity for you to try it out: Google is launching a new free online course for people to learn how to use Rust, a programming language designed to be safe, concurrent, and efficient.
What the Rust course covers
The course is designed for beginners who have never used Rust, but have experienced in coding already, mainly C++ or Java. It is expected to take four days to complete—the course will cover the Rust syntax and language by modifying existing programs and writing new ones using Rust.
The first three days will start with the basics, fundamentals, and basic syntax. Then you’ll get to advance topics, such as generics and error handling. On the fourth and last day, you’ll be introduced to how Rust is used on Android platform development.
It would be impossible to learn Rust in four days, so the course will not be comprehensive. But you will learn the most fundamental concepts of the language, its structures, and conventions—enough to, at the very least, add “competent in Rust” in your resume.
To access the course, simply follow this link to GitHub to start the course. There is no need to register or login to begin.
Why Rust?
Back when we didn’t have the printing press, most writing was done by hand. This required a lot more effort and time to make products, and it was easier to produce errors in writing. Although writing by hand gave people more control, it also exposed their work to mistakes. Back then, a single error could bring the whole credibility of a written piece down and could mean starting over.
The emergence of Rust in the coding world is similar to the emergence of the printing press. You can think of writing by hand as C and C++, and Rust as the printing press. A lot of our older systems are written in C and C++, meaning it’s not unusual to find bugs or errors in the code. Once Rust came into the scene, many companies starting adopting the language and even transcribing a lot of their previous C and C++ work into Rust to make them less likely to have bugs, be safer from hackers, and be faster by taking less memory and processing power—about half as much electricity according to a recent study.
Job opportunities
As mentioned, having experience working with Rust is something many employers are looking for: RustJobs is a whole job board dedicated to employers searching for people who know how to use it. Some jobs, like this remote job from Jobot, require you to design, build, and maintain a blockchain infrastructure using Rust—with a starting salary of $150,000 to $500,ooo.