Rust is a programming language focused on three things: safety, speed, and concurrency. Think of it as having the power of languages like C++ but with guard rails that prevent common, hard-to-find bugs.

Its most famous feature is its approach to memory safety. Many languages use a “garbage collector,” a background process that cleans up memory that’s no longer in use. This works, but it can introduce unpredictable pauses. Rust manages memory at compile time, meaning the cleanup plan is baked into the program before it even runs. This gives it C-like performance without the risk of memory errors that have plagued software for decades.

Rust also handles concurrency—running multiple tasks at once—in a very safe way. It has a system that prevents “data races,” which happen when different parts of a program try to change the same piece of data at the same time. This is a common source of tricky bugs in concurrent programs, and Rust’s design helps eliminate them from the start.

Getting started with Rust is simple. The official tool for installing Rust is called rustup. It manages your Rust installation, allowing you to switch between different versions of the language and keep everything up to date.

Along with the Rust compiler, rustup also installs a powerful tool called Cargo. Cargo is Rust’s build system and package manager. It handles compiling your code, downloading the libraries your project depends on (called “crates”), and running your programs. You'll use it for nearly every Rust project.

Let's create a classic "Hello, world!" program. The easiest way is to let Cargo set up the project for us. Open your terminal, navigate to a directory where you keep your projects, and run this command:

This creates a new directory called hello_world. Inside, you’ll find two things: a Cargo.toml file (which contains configuration for your project) and a src directory with a file named main.rs. All your Rust code will go in the src folder.

Open src/main.rs. It already contains a simple program:

Let's break this down.

fn main() is the main function. Every Rust executable must have one. It’s the first code that runs when the program starts.

println!("Hello, world!"); prints text to the screen. The ! indicates that println! is a Rust macro, not a regular function. We'll explore macros later, but for now, just know they are a way to write code that writes other code.

To run this program, navigate into the hello_world directory in your terminal and use Cargo:

Cargo will first compile your program and then run the resulting executable. You should see Hello, world! printed to your terminal. You've just written and run your first Rust program.

Time to check your understanding of the basics.

You now have a working Rust development environment and know how to create, build, and run a basic project with Cargo. This is the foundation for everything that comes next.