A small introduction

Thank you for reading Rust Quest!

This book is designed for people with zero experience in programming, the only prerequisites are a curious mind and a will to learn.
Even if you already know a language, try taking a look at the chapters, maybe you’ll learn something new.

So… Why Rust? Isn’t it seen as a very difficult language and usually not recommended for beginners?
Well, my goal is to prove that not only it can be your first programming language, but that it’s one of the best choices.

Most languages are pretty lenient with what they allow coders to do: Python and Javascript are dynamically typed, C gives too much freedom, Go handles memory for you at the cost of runtime performance…
I believe one of the strongest reasons of why Rust is considered a hard language is that it forces you to write correct code, no exceptions.
This causes the programmer to have to relearn a lot of their habits, or to dislike it because “it doesn’t let me do what I want”.

If you don’t understand anything of what I’ve said, good!
This means that you can start fresh, and learn to write code without any preconceptions.

I know it’s a strong opinion to have, but hopefully my reasoning will become clear as you read.

Also, dont be afraid!
Once you learn one language well, transitioning into others will be much easier.
Programming isn’t about the language, it’s about the way you reason and apply what you know.

Now, what makes this book special?

The official Rust book is excellent, and I would recommend it to anyone that wants to learn Rust.
The problem is that it assumes that you know at least another language, so it’s less than ideal for starting out.

Rust Quest is meant to fill this gap, to provide a way to learn Rust from scratch, in a fun and fulfilling way.

To achieve this objective, I’ve divided core concepts into “Quests”.
Each quest provides small programming exercises that you’ll need to solve to continue.

It is possible that sometimes you won’t understand what’s going on, and that’s okay!
In my experience, the best way to learn something is to battle with it, and find out the answers by yourself.

For this reason, most exercises are meant to be intuitively solved, and give you just the right amount of information.
If you find yourself stuck though, you can always click the “Hint” button (the light bulb icon) to get a little help.

Now, try running the following snippet (click the button on the right or press Ctrl + ↵ on your keyboard while editing):

println!("Hello ​World​!")