The Rust Programming Language

Published on 31 March 2018 (Updated: 15 May 2023)

Welcome to the Rust page! Here, you'll find a description of the language as well as a list of sample programs in that language.

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Description

At this point, it's probably no surprise that I took to Wikipedia to learn more about Rust.

According to Wikipedia, Rust is our first systems programming language. Up until now, we've really only played with general-purpose languages, so this is a nice change of pace. That said, what is a systems programming language?

Again, according to Wikipedia, systems programming languages are designed for system software like device drivers and operating systems. Back when I took a compilers course, the professor used Rust for their example compiler, so I guess that checks out.

With that said, what else can we find out about Rust? Well, Rust first showed up on the scene back in 2010 as a Mozilla sponsored project. Today, a large portion of the language has been written by the open source community. How cool is that?

In terms of syntax, Rust resembles languages like C and C++, but it borrows quite a lot from a general-purpose function programming language called ML. In addition, the language contains features like memory safety and ownership.

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