Refactoring to Rust

2 An overview of Rust

This chapter covers

• Designing systems that properly utilize Rust’s ownership system
• Visualizing Rust’s lifetime system to aid in debugging
• Controlling allocations of strings for fast performance
• Enums and basic error handling

Before we can integrate a Rust library into an existing application written in another language, we first need to understand the basics of Rust programming. This chapter guides us through a simple application to manage digital artworks for an art museum and teaches us about how the ownership system works. Ownership and borrowing are considered by many to be some of the most challenging things for new Rust developers to learn. We’re starting with them here instead of something simpler because ...