Overview
Want to learn Rust systematically? These 5 progressive tutorials take you from installation to expert-level Rust mastery, with comprehensive coverage of ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes.
📚 Tutorial Levels
Level 1: Initial Setup (0-5%)
Coverage: 0-5% of Rust knowledge
What you’ll learn: Install Rust toolchain with rustup, configure your development environment, verify installation, run your first “Hello, World!” program with cargo.
Prerequisites: None - complete beginner friendly
Estimated length: 400-500 lines
Level 2: Quick Start (5-30%)
Coverage: 5-30% of Rust knowledge
What you’ll learn: 12 essential Rust concepts through focused touchpoint examples - variables, types, functions, control flow, ownership basics, borrowing fundamentals, structs, enums, error handling, modules, collections, and testing.
Prerequisites: Initial Setup complete
Estimated length: 750-900 lines
Level 3: Beginner (0-60%)
Complete Beginner’s Guide to Rust
Coverage: 0-60% of Rust knowledge
What you’ll learn: Comprehensive Rust fundamentals including deep ownership system explanation, references and borrowing with rules, slices, structs and methods, enums and pattern matching, error handling, collections, modules and packages, and testing. Includes extensive Mermaid diagrams for ownership visualization.
Prerequisites: Quick Start recommended (or programming experience)
Estimated length: 1,700-2,300 lines
Level 4: Intermediate (60-85%)
Coverage: 60-85% of Rust knowledge
What you’ll learn: Production-grade Rust with generics, traits and trait bounds, lifetime deep-dive with annotations, smart pointers (Box, Rc, Arc, RefCell), concurrency with threads and channels, async/await fundamentals, iterators and closures, and advanced error handling patterns.
Prerequisites: Beginner tutorial (strong ownership foundation required)
Estimated length: 1,350-1,700 lines
Level 5: Advanced (85-95%)
Coverage: 85-95% of Rust knowledge
What you’ll learn: Expert-level topics including unsafe Rust and FFI, macros (declarative and procedural), advanced trait patterns, memory layout and optimization, performance profiling and tuning, type-level programming with const generics, and WebAssembly compilation.
Prerequisites: Intermediate tutorial (mastery of traits, lifetimes, and concurrency required)
Estimated length: 1,250-1,500 lines
🎯 Choosing Your Tutorial
| Your Background | Start Here |
|---|---|
| Never programmed before | Initial Setup → Beginner |
| Programmer, new to Rust | Quick Start → Beginner → Intermediate |
| Experienced with C/C++ | Quick Start → Beginner (focus on ownership) |
| Experienced with GC languages | Beginner (ownership will be new) |
| Want production Rust skills | Intermediate → Advanced |
| Building systems software | All tutorials (ownership mastery critical) |
| Building web services | Through Intermediate (async/await essential) |
| Building WebAssembly apps | Through Advanced (WASM compilation) |
🦀 Rust’s Learning Curve
Rust has a steeper initial learning curve than languages with garbage collection. This is intentional - the ownership system prevents entire classes of bugs at compile time. Our tutorials:
- Introduce ownership early (Quick Start) to build correct mental models
- Provide extensive diagrams (Mermaid visualizations) for abstract concepts
- Use progressive disclosure - simple examples before complex patterns
- Include many exercises to reinforce ownership understanding
- Link concepts together showing how ownership enables fearless concurrency
The initial investment pays off with memory-safe, fast, concurrent programs.
📖 How to Use These Tutorials
- Read sequentially within each tutorial (sections build on each other)
- Run all code examples - type them yourself for best retention
- Complete exercises before moving to next section
- Study Mermaid diagrams carefully (especially ownership visualizations)
- Reference earlier sections when needed - ownership takes time to master
- Use the Cookbook for quick patterns while learning
🔗 Related Resources
After completing tutorials, explore:
- Rust Cookbook - Practical recipes for common tasks
- How-To Guides - Problem-solving guides for specific challenges
- Reference - Cheat sheet, glossary, and learning resources
- Best Practices - Idiomatic Rust patterns
- Anti-Patterns - Common mistakes to avoid
🚀 Ready to Start?
Choose your tutorial level above and begin your Rust journey!