I've just begun reading this book. It's quite readable (for a serious programming language book), by a couple of people with a depth of history with Rust and with a long history in other serious systems programming projects.
Earlier today I went looking for my first "Rust book", as Rust is at the top of my list as the next computer language that I want to learn. I started back in the 1970's with FORTRAN on CDC servers, and then with C inside Bell Labs on PDP 8's and 11's. Kernighan and Ritchie's original 1978 "C Programming Language" is the oldest "classic" language book on my shelf, which, like this Rust book, I purchased shortly after it was published.
Hopefully I will remember to return to this review, once I have gotten further into it. But so far, it's looking like a potential "classic."
Update #1: I've gotten a quarter of the way into the book. It's most excellent so far, combining a rare mix of a readable, conversational style with a coherent organization and meticulous accuracy both in the detail and in the conceptual, by a couple of authors who know their stuff, both Rust and systems programming. Unless the authors are the 1 in a 1000 who write polished prose in the first draft, there's the mark of some dang good editing here too.
Update #2: This book (at least the Kindle version I'm reading) lacks a Table of Contents, which I miss. The book is quite well organized, by chapter and subchapter, so I'm not sure why there is no Table of Contents. Perhaps the hardcopy edition will have such, but the "location" rather than "page number" positioning of a Kindle book makes a Table of Contents more difficult?
Update #3: Oops - sorry - there is a table of contents in the Kindle version. It doesn't appear as part of the inline text such as after the title and copyright pages, before the Introduction. Rather it's a special Kindle accessible table of contents (look for the 3 horizontal bar menu pull down icon, near the upper left), which you can access from any "page" in the book.
Update #4: Unlike Kernighan and Ritchie's original 1978 "C Programming Language" book, and unlike David Beazley's essential Python Essential Reference, Blandy's Programming Rust book is not the primary and essential language reference. In particular, the Index of Blandy's book is only about 15 pages, and I often find that a particular keyword for which I am looking is not in Blandy's Index. Beazley's far more thorough index is about 77 pages, for a similar sized book, of around 600 pages each. This reflects our changing times ... the world is online now, or at least Rust is. For example, over the last day, I was frustrated by my limited newbie understanding of the various string types in Rust (a rich and carefully thought out area of Rust), until I realized that searching in the online Rust documentation, doc.rust-lang.org for the language, library and tools, and in particular, for my particular questions of the moment, doc.rust-lang.org/std for Rust's standard library, was a much more rewarding way to learn what I needed to know next. (Yes, a 200 page book in 1978 could be a far more complete reference than a 600 page book today; the Rust of today is a far larger language than C was back in 1978.)
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From the Publisher
From the Preface
Rust is a language for systems programming.
This bears some explanation these days, as systems programming is unfamiliar to most working programmers. Yet it underlies everything we do.
You close your laptop. The operating system detects this, suspends all the running programs, turns off the screen, and puts the computer to sleep. Later, you open the laptop: the screen and other components are powered up again, and each program is able to pick up where it left off. We take this for granted. But systems programmers wrote a lot of code to make that happen.
This book will not teach you systems programming. In fact, this book covers many details of memory management that might seem unnecessarily abstruse at first, if you haven’t already done some systems programming on your own. But if you are a seasoned systems programmer, you’ll find that Rust is something exceptional: a new tool that eliminates major, well-understood problems that have plagued a whole industry for decades.
Who should read this book
If you’re already a systems programmer, and you’re ready for an alternative to C++, this book is for you.
If you’re an experienced developer in any programming language, whether that’s C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, or something else, this book is for you too. However, you don’t just need to learn Rust. To get the most out of the language, you also need to gain some experience with systems programming. We recommend reading this book while also implementing some systems programming side projects in Rust. Build something you’ve never built before, something that takes advantage of Rust’s speed, concurrency, and safety. The areas listed above should give you some ideas.
Systems programming is for:
- operating systems
- device drivers of all kinds
- filesystems
- databases
- networking
- cryptography
- media codecs
- media processing
- memory management
- text rendering
- virtualization and software containers
- scientific simulations
- games
About the author
Great book
Found this is a well written book for people that come with a background in other languages. I have written code in C, C#, Java professionally over the past 18 years. Unique Rust concepts are explained by providing a rational behind them and examples relative to other languages (C/C++, Python). Even after reading the free on-line Rust book I found this very helpful. In fact I wish I was not cheap and bought it when I started, it is hard to go past a free book though. The concepts are treated with clear, straight to the point examples that should be relatable to an experienced developer. I was worried after reading some other reviews regarding code example and diagram formatting. Not sure what the problem was for the other reader, I've attached some screenshots of both code and diagrams. I have no problem reading / viewing the content. Obviously there are multiple ways you can configure your reader app (page layout, font face and font size) and it may be limited by the actual device you use. I read it on a 13" Mac Book and my experience is vastly different to the other reviewers. I have no qualms with the font, code examples formatting or diagrams.
Top reviews from the United States
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Top reviews from other countries
- DavidReviewed in Australia on January 28, 2021
Very comprehensive introduction to Rust
- A. P. ChallinorReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2018
Excellent, well written book.
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on October 18, 2018
This is an excellent book
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