Getting Started with Rust

Feb 1, 2025 5 min

Why Rust?

Rust has been the most loved language on Stack Overflow for years running. It offers:

  • Memory safety without a garbage collector
  • Zero-cost abstractions — you don’t pay for what you don’t use
  • Fearless concurrency — the compiler catches data races at build time

Installing Rust

The recommended way is via rustup:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

After installation, verify it works:

rustc --version
cargo --version

Hello, World!

fn main() {
    println!("Hello, Rust!");
}

Save this as main.rs and run with rustc main.rs && ./main.

Cargo — Rust’s Package Manager

Cargo handles building, testing, and dependencies:

cargo new my_project
cd my_project
cargo run

Variables and Mutability

By default, variables in Rust are immutable:

let x = 5;
// x = 6; // Error! Can't mutate
let mut y = 5;
y = 6; // OK

Next Steps

In the next post, we’ll explore Rust’s ownership model — the feature that makes memory safety possible without a garbage collector.