Introduction to Rust Programming

Course Objectives:
1. Understand the basic syntax and features of the Rust programming language.
2. Learn about Rust’s ownership and borrowing system for memory safety.
3. Gain proficiency in writing concurrent and parallel programs in Rust.
4. Learn about Rust’s ecosystem and tooling, including Cargo and Rust’s package manager.
5. Develop skills in writing idiomatic Rust code and understanding Rust’s philosophy.

Course Outline:
– Introduction to Rust
• Overview of Rust programming language and its features
• Installing Rust and setting up development environment
• Writing and running “Hello, World!” program in Rust

– Rust Basics
• Variables, data types, and basic syntax in Rust
• Control flow structures (if statements, loops, match expressions)
• Functions and modules in Rust

– Ownership and Borrowing
• Understanding ownership and borrowing in Rust
• Ownership rules and concepts (move semantics, borrowing, lifetimes)
• Memory safety and avoiding common pitfalls

– Structs, Enums, and Pattern Matching
• Defining and using structs and enums in Rust
• Pattern matching and destructuring
• Implementing methods and associated functions

– Error Handling and Option Type
• Handling errors and recovering from failures in Rust
• Result and Option types for error handling
• Propagating errors and unwrapping results

– Concurrency in Rust
• Introduction to concurrency and parallelism in Rust
• Using threads for concurrent programming
• Message passing and synchronization with channels

– Traits and Generics
• Defining and implementing traits in Rust
• Using generics to write flexible and reusable code
• Trait bounds and associated types

– Advanced Topics and Projects
• Exploring advanced topics in Rust (macros, unsafe code, etc.)
• Final project: Developing a small-scale software application using Rust