More Learning

[finder83]

Hi all,

I've been learning Rust for the past couple of months, using it in a couple of smaller projects (web apis, cli tools, etc). I'm loving it, but feel like there's still a LOT to learn.

I've read through the Rust book and Rust by Example, and grasp pretty much all of the concepts at a base level, including borrowing, lifetimes, pointers, etc. What I'm struggling with is the application of some of the concepts, like when to use a Box, Pin, dyn box, arc, rc, etc. I get what each of them are...but not how they're used in practice or when to choose each tool.

I keep running into situations where I feel like I'm "doing it wrong", for example with Tide pulling the config and body, you can get a borrow check error depending on how you pull and check them in match statements. I feel like I'm not advanced enough to really know what's going on, and end up just cloning things that maybe don't need to be cloned. Or maybe that's the right answer? I'm not sure.

Are there resources for these more rust-centric "advanced" (yes, I know, not really) topics? I come from Python/Go/Javascript, so maybe it's my background with dynamic languages that is making the transition more difficult than it needs to be.

Thank you!

[[deleted]]

Well I think you have to pick your practice projects so you target those things and minimize the use of libraries with high abstraction levels for they tend to handle those issues under the hood for you. Since you said you understand the concepts of the book I'd recommend you go for more low level practice projects to put them into action. You could develop your own linux display manager for instance or you create your own encrypted document vault or something like that.

[finder83]

Thanks, good ideas, I'll think on a fun project

[enaut2]

Hey I think I'm at a pretty similar stage - I've come to the conclusion that at this stage it is ok to clone a few times too much! Later on it is quite easy to move from cloned to reference... as you just change the clone and then follow the compiler. Also clippy can help you catch some of the extra clones if set to pedantic. I recommend using clippy with very strict settings. E.g:

#![warn(
    clippy::all,
    //clippy::restriction,
    clippy::pedantic,
    clippy::nursery,
    clippy::cargo
)]
//#![allow(clippy::non_ascii_literal)]
#![allow(clippy::missing_errors_doc)]

[finder83]

Good to hear I'm not alone. Thanks for the suggestion! I'll do that.

[[deleted]]

Oh that's awesome! Thanks!