Rust Programming Language RustFest Global 2020, 23 Dec 2020

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From YouTube: Stefan Baerisch - Learning Rust with Humility and in Three Steps — RustFest Global 2020

Description

When learning Rust, it is tempting to use advanced features and crates right away. But this can be overwhelming and lead to frustration. In this talk, you will get hints on how to learn Rust step by step, using a careful, structured approach and some confident humility.

For more details and resources, check out:
https://rustfest.global/session/24-learning-rust-with-humility-and-in-three-steps/

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Stefan gives us three steps to learn rust, not saying that follow you must, but if humble you are with rust, you'll go far as you learn the compiler to trust.

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So can you hear me now just cause your feedback, because we had some.

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You mind restarting quickly.

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Sorry for that, but well you see, there's always something more to learn if it's only the mute button, okay, rust with mule team in three easy ideas. So what I tried to do learning west was to write little desktop applications. Because, honestly, I like desktop applications and I didn't start out which was directly but I went through well different technologies, which gave me the opportunity to well see how what made it difficult to learn, different things, and so the first idea learning rest is or learning. Anything really is.

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Why do you think it might be hard? Why do you feel it's hard know your challenge, so the background was basically I had to write my desktop application. I choose a desktop framework. I started us with qt. Qt is a c plus plus framework, and it's rather big.

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So I had to learn or refresh a lot of c plus plus, which is tricky, and I had to learn cute, which is extremely large, as the framework goes, and I also had to deal with quite a lot of surprises. So I had to learn a build system and I had to learn how different compilers and different platforms worked, and that took a lot of time.

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Next attempt was to switch over to web technology and electron, which was not hard to learn, but again was much to learn and a few things were once again unexpected. So dependencies between the many javascript packages that I used were really hard to figure out and signing the code to submit it to app stores was.

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Not really nice, which is well. Finally, I switched over to another architecture which worked, and that was based on well swift, javascript and rust in the back end. So what I came up with is basically few gears which I had to learn. I didn't use it before swift, which I didn't use before and rust, which I didn't use before so well, many different things and finally I realized that rust.

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So it was in certain parts the hardest one to learn, because it made me think was also quite quick to learn, because there was not too much to learn and everything that was there was rather well transparent and expected. There were few surprises.

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So if you struggle with the language the first tip, the first idea is be aware that in learning rust as in each technology, you have to look at different things. You have to wonder: is it just hard to learn so? Are there some concepts that I don't know yet, or is this also much to learn? Do I have to learn a lot of libraries, a lot of language concepts, a lot of syntax, or are there many different things that I also need to learn package management, build systems, etc?

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Each language has a different, well different degrees of difficulties, different things that you have to keep in mind and the thing with rust is that the language itself, the concept the borrower's, echo etc, are quite challenging to learn, especially if you haven't worked with the system programming language, but it is once you have done it. It gets easier quite quickly, so it is worthwhile not to get discouraged if you run into this steep learning curve at the beginning, because everything else will be easier and it will be easier to get it along.

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However, you can do yourself, one large favor, and to try not to do too much at the beginning, because when you learn concepts which language like rust, you will have to face many new things, just when you start and you'll have to have some basic understandings for the ownership model, for example, for the syntax.

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In order to accomplish even the first steps with the language that means give yourself some time and once you start learning focus on the language go over this first step here and then slowly, work yourself up with the ecosystem, learn the different libraries learn. The context of the language so shows a simple application domain and try not to change too much. Rust is extremely powerful. So there can be many things that you would like to learn. That would potentially be useful for your project, but give yourself time and focus on this first step and well.

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Learning should be easier. When I did my little project, I basically started out with doing word: counting application, hello, world, apps, etc, and only then slowly moved on to some multi-spreading work and um more complex things that I needed for my application. Back-End and even there was well. I chose the most boring and maybe even inefficient architecture that could possibly work.

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Related to that is the second idea practice.

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um I have the well I'm going to say the personal weakness to read a lot about languages before I use them, especially if I have the impression that they are very many new and interesting concepts in the language, and this can be a difficult. It can be difficult in languages where well, you can potentially be overwhelmed if you try too much at once.

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um I hope I'm living here in munich.

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We have quite a lot of mountains and I always thought that the difference is between trying to think about a hiking trip on a map and seeing it in real life, because in real life, things are always slightly more complex, which means that if you choose for your project, um all the features that you could potentially want, and if you want to use the most elegant, um syntax and don't repeat yourself and and also in well quite good idiomatic code, then it is quite likely that in series this will work all out all will work out.

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But in practice you run into these slight things that hold you back. So you might just have a problem with one particular syntax feature that you haven't grasped as much as you like to, and this will all hold you back.

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So it's often at least for somebody like me, a better approach to do very, very small things and then practice them and then do something else again.

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This will enable you to have well a lot of certainty, a lot of practice when you finally move on to harder and more complex topics.

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So what did I do? I, the first things that I learned is just ownership and basic syntax.

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So once I had the roughest idea about what a copy type was, I just moved into just pushing some structs around and then using clone a lot and after I did that I started to work more with references and then slowly worked over two smart pointers.

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So in essence, I just tried to get myself to the same knowledge level that I would have in other languages, for example, go java python where I do more programming, and that gave me a rough idea on how I would have to move along with it's only then on did I look at my application domain.

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There was this little back end for this timer and I thought okay, which features. What do I actually need? Which collections would be useful? How are these collections used?

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I think I need multi spreading and maybe a library I use ectix um just to handle some internal web requests and after I, edit each of these features I practiced a little bit. Did some refactoring did some changes and in this way I was always able to slowly move along, so I always went through this planning doing phase which allowed me to well get something to work.

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Which brings me to the certain for me, at least for most the important idea in learning, something that is what is but can be quite challenging like west, um be humble, I think we as well software developers, architects. We always like to not.

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Honest to feel clever to be good about ourselves, because we have grasped and mastered the features of our language, because we write good code, the most idiomatic one code, the most well safe code or the most performant code. Sometimes, in order to get to this point where we write the best code, we could possibly think about.

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We challenge ourselves too much. It's it's! Basically, if you start running and decides that within two months, you want to run a marathon, so take it slow and rust actually allows you to start slow.

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It allows you to be even bored with what you're working on and then slowly move to more ambitious things which gives you the confidence that you will need to move on with your personal project without well being slightly overwhelmed all the time or without staring at a wall of compiler errors that you don't really understand, because you decided to use the most advanced equates with the well most advanced usage of traits in the type system.

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This also has a sensitive advantage that you can actually build higher in terms of knowledge.

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Personal idea of programming languages about learning in general was always that you build the more advanced concepts on the easier concepts that you have grasped before.

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So, in order to get a good idea, for example, about ownership, I think it helps not only to think about ownership, but but it's not necessary to have some idea about pointer management memory management works, for example in c, or what reference counting means in other languages like python, and this gives you or doing many different things gives you this broad basis that you can put all the things that you need to do into context.

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You not only know. Okay. I have seen in this book that I needed to do it in the following way and I know the ref's concepts, but you can also relate it to other concepts that you have learned before, and this can only happen if you be humble, and do this small little steps which ultimately allow you to ascend faster.

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If you always work with the most difficult thing that you can possibly grasp- and this is the most clever code you can possibly write- it will be quite hard for you to debug this code or to refactor this code or even to come back to this code. If you, for example, move to something else for a couple of months, so doing simple things and doing them often ultimately leads to mastery, and I would argue quicker than if you tried to challenge yourself too much.

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This is all saying that shortcuts makes for long delays, and I think this applies to learning programming languages.

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Well, I can only remember that when I started to learn rust, the first program I wanted to write was a word counter. I always um uses little things that, where I go over a couple of hundred files on my file systems and counts the words and give me the most frequent ones, which is usually a couple of minutes or maybe an hour in different programming languages, which must it took a little bit longer, mostly because I started out, assuming that I could just transfer one to one from the c plus program.

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And I couldn't I had to well. Do this baby steps to slowly ramp up.

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And I tried to just allow myself to be less clever with my code and I came up with well six sayings. I think some of you might disagree, but even if you disagree, maybe just think about it. So first of all simple code is okay.

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You don't necessarily need to do pattern matching or complex programs or nicest patching rules. If you can just go for if else you may end up with screens on screens of code with non-nice if-else statements, but you'll end up with a working program that you can then refactor.

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It is also okay to limit yourself, so rust made the design decision to have many things that are useful, but that are not in the standard library. There are many good crates for error, handling, etc, for better error, types for better concurrency, abstractions, etc, and I always have to stop myself from looking at, creates.

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I o and find the most suited the most interesting grade and allow myself to go to write a simple solution, even as a simple solution means that my error value is a string and the code is maybe well less nice less idiomatic than it could be, because it allows me to focus on some basics and to at least know what I don't know about my code.

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Inefficient code is okay, rust can produce very fast programs and, with essence, support also very fast servers.

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The thing is especially with I think things get complicated pretty quickly, so allow yourself for your first version of your code to be inefficient. Do some memory copies, do some clones right in sync server and later on. If you realize that you need something faster, you can always move there now to change tone. A little bit unsafe code is not okay.

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So, first of all, it's unlikely that you will succeed in tweaking the borrow checker by going for unsafe code, and it also makes things actually harder, because one of the nice things about rust is that you don't have to worry too much about shooting yourself in the foot or to make well mistakes that you wouldn't know about.

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Oh, for example, um when I wrote about a rust program when I worked with a vector and had to reallocate some memory, I just thought: okay, that's interesting! That is much harder than it would be in go, but thinking about it in this particular corner case.

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I think when I would do this in go my area yeah, I would most likely do a copy where I wouldn't really want a copy and so well the safety guarantees of rusk actually help you learning the compiler is your tutor in a way borrowing code is okay, so there are many nice macro sets that can help us macro. Programming is quite interesting. Knightly has many features many quaids need nightly.

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I would not necessarily go there at the beginning. Just stay with a boring old, stable world and move along yeah and to repeat myself: um small steps in your code are okay, so if you find yourself writing boring short functions, you're quite likely on the right track, yeah, and that's almost all of the talk, so the summary is quite easy. There's always this idea in where computer science and management everywhere of improvement loops and do something and learn improve it.

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Well, almost embarrassingly, it's the same with learning a programming language. The only thing that is different with rust is that you should keep your steps rather.

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You have learned something be motivated to learn something more write: some code, look at the code, refactor, it think okay, which additional feature. Could I I what I want to use, or maybe how I do allow myself to use this particular this one crate that I will then learn about and research. Well, you can stay motivated, you don't overwhelm yourself and you make slow progress right. Well, things that start slow can be quickly. um Quite quick um for practical things.

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If you are some of you are just getting started with rusk or have well done some initial learning.

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I can just give you some hints from me: I've I'm a reader, so I learn mostly by reading and by doing I ironically, don't work particularly well with videos. But for me the approach that brought me. The first was starting with the rust book, which is quite nice because it explains a lot and then you have some code, then do some exercises and then go back to rust by example, where you have more code. So maybe you don't need so much so many explanations anymore and you can just read the code.

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Take the code change the code and to do some more experiments and maybe start do some relatively simple things so lead code or without a code or just porting. Your command line, a simple command line tool is something that is well limited in scope, and that gives you a feeling of success when you're done and after that. What I find quite interesting is just um select some books and then go to the gibbertout repository.

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Often you find there example code online, even if you don't want to buy the book and then just go over the example code read the example code and wonder: okay, what are they doing here? Which features? Are they using and then maybe play around with this example code? A little more?

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This maybe then, could be a step for your own complexer projects or even to well move to an existing larger application and see how they are working with on what source code, maybe just download it, make some changes and see if it still compiles.

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Okay, yeah, that's just been my personal experience with writing my first rest program. So a couple of I think it's about 1000 lines of rust code working messages around in desktop application.

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It took me longer than I originally would would have thought, but it was fun and I would say ultimately it felt good writing rust because I, even if I at times, was quite of challenge learning it.

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I always felt that the code that I was writing would actually work and that I would actually be able to change it in a couple of months time. So that's all that I have to say now thanks for listening in and if there are any questions. I'd be happy to answer.

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Thank you, stefan for that very validating talk, um as I'm sure everyone will agree. It's very rough, sometimes at the beginning, um very very good pointers, yeah.

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It's like it's, it's not so much rough. I think what you have to refrain from and that's what I think I.

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Write a lot of python and with python partners always say programming. Language is easy mode because you have well, you have a garbage collector. You have reference counting, you have a nice syntax and python is extremely good in hiding complex libraries from the user. Rust has to expose some of these complexities, and this can be different, but I think what I'd really like to express don't be discouraged. There is this bump at the beginning, where you have to learn the concepts, unfortunately, there's no way around it, but once you've done this, things will get easier.

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Then russ will really help you.

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Exactly yeah, so we do have one question uh from the public based on the experience you've had with previous languages. What was the most difficult thing to grasp.

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Actually, access web- and this is not so much two things- um actors tries to use quite advanced traits in how you actually use a library, and they are moving quite fast. So I ended up with finding a lot of different or outdated documentation, and it was quite a bit of trial and error, and since I'm not an expert on the trade system, I couldn't just go to this horse couldn't see. Okay. This is how this is supposed to work, but I had to slowly work myself up and yeah.

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That's actually the one reason where the compiler couldn't help me. Normally, the compiler is extremely good, especially now with errol message display, say: okay, ownership's not working or you should know this needs other to be cloned or it's owned somewhere else. um The trade is missing. There.

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A lot of trades, but I couldn't really at the beginning, understand this and that's why well change is one of the things and why I would advise to start with standard where you have more stability, simpler code, even if it means that the performance and the features are not necessarily optimal.

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And what would you say is the best point on the learning curve to start interacting with existing projects in your.

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Experience, I think, when you have skimmed the rust book once and with skinned, I mean if you find a project and they start throwing about. Okay, you have to work with this particular trade. Oh yeah, you should know okay.

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I may not have grasped this now, but I know that there is this chapter in the book and I can think I can figure out how it works so that you, um you don't read a sentence and you have the feeling that you have to look up every second word and and then it really com depends on the project that you want to work with.

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I've really found that a good middle point is um well example, source code from books, because, especially if you go into the later features, you can just say: okay, I know this concept. I know this concept and then this concept, but it's not the code that I've written before or that I have written my exercises in and then you can maybe use well start on command line tools.

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So maybe I basically looked at simple web applications because I need a web application, but maybe just also go to github um google for command line to look for command line to request some easy application domain. Nothing too challenging then just see whether you understand it or not, and if you don't understand it, move on to something else, what or dig in whatever ends up it depends on what keeps you motivated don't get frustrated. I think that's the most important thing.

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Yeah the most important, but if you do get stuck um what place? Do you turn for help? uh Is there any particular website or place.

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Not really so I usually go. Rest, for example, is by example, is quite nice in terms of book. I still find the old o'reilly book. Quite nice um packed say they have the subscription service, but they have the mastering rust. The second one is quite good and say: um source code is also on github, which at least allows you to just search by m keyword and to see how this is used in context.

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It depends so much if, if you're struggling with a library like my actress example, which is not related to much directors, it's basically that I didn't use a library and then you need example, code to make it work. If you're struggling with some concepts- and I usually I'm just hop from book to book and then try to work with the simplest possible example that I can make up and well play around with either rust playground or with some local code and see whether I can make it work.

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I think that's about it for questions.