Learning Rust: A Month of Memory Safety

Why Rust?

After years of JavaScript and Python, I decided to dive into systems programming. Rust's promise of memory safety without garbage collection intrigued me.

The Learning Curve

Week 1: Fighting the Borrow Checker

The borrow checker was frustrating at first. Every other line wouldn't compile!

let mut s = String::from("hello");
let r1 = &s;
let r2 = &mut s; // ERROR!

Week 2: Understanding Ownership

Then it clicked. Ownership isn't just a compiler feature—it's a way of thinking about program design.

Week 3: Pattern Matching Joy

Pattern matching in Rust is beautiful:

match result {
    Ok(value) => println!("Success: {}", value),
    Err(e) => eprintln!("Error: {}", e),
}

Week 4: Building Something Real

Finally built a CLI tool. The type system caught so many bugs before runtime!

Key Takeaways

The borrow checker is your friend
Zero-cost abstractions are real
The community is incredibly helpful
Documentation is top-tier

Absolutely! Rust changes how you think about programming, even when using other languages.