Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development

Top positive review

pj@usa.net

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2017

I've just begun reading this book. It's quite readable (for a serious programming language book), by a couple of people with a depth of history with Rust and with a long history in other serious systems programming projects.

Earlier today I went looking for my first "Rust book", as Rust is at the top of my list as the next computer language that I want to learn. I started back in the 1970's with FORTRAN on CDC servers, and then with C inside Bell Labs on PDP 8's and 11's. Kernighan and Ritchie's original 1978 "C Programming Language" is the oldest "classic" language book on my shelf, which, like this Rust book, I purchased shortly after it was published.

Hopefully I will remember to return to this review, once I have gotten further into it. But so far, it's looking like a potential "classic."

Update #1: I've gotten a quarter of the way into the book. It's most excellent so far, combining a rare mix of a readable, conversational style with a coherent organization and meticulous accuracy both in the detail and in the conceptual, by a couple of authors who know their stuff, both Rust and systems programming. Unless the authors are the 1 in a 1000 who write polished prose in the first draft, there's the mark of some dang good editing here too.

Update #2: This book (at least the Kindle version I'm reading) lacks a Table of Contents, which I miss. The book is quite well organized, by chapter and subchapter, so I'm not sure why there is no Table of Contents. Perhaps the hardcopy edition will have such, but the "location" rather than "page number" positioning of a Kindle book makes a Table of Contents more difficult?

Update #3: Oops - sorry - there is a table of contents in the Kindle version. It doesn't appear as part of the inline text such as after the title and copyright pages, before the Introduction. Rather it's a special Kindle accessible table of contents (look for the 3 horizontal bar menu pull down icon, near the upper left), which you can access from any "page" in the book.

Update #4: Unlike Kernighan and Ritchie's original 1978 "C Programming Language" book, and unlike David Beazley's essential Python Essential Reference, Blandy's Programming Rust book is not the primary and essential language reference. In particular, the Index of Blandy's book is only about 15 pages, and I often find that a particular keyword for which I am looking is not in Blandy's Index. Beazley's far more thorough index is about 77 pages, for a similar sized book, of around 600 pages each. This reflects our changing times ... the world is online now, or at least Rust is. For example, over the last day, I was frustrated by my limited newbie understanding of the various string types in Rust (a rich and carefully thought out area of Rust), until I realized that searching in the online Rust documentation, doc.rust-lang.org for the language, library and tools, and in particular, for my particular questions of the moment, doc.rust-lang.org/std for Rust's standard library, was a much more rewarding way to learn what I needed to know next. (Yes, a 200 page book in 1978 could be a far more complete reference than a 600 page book today; the Rust of today is a far larger language than C was back in 1978.)

70 people found this helpful

Top critical review

All critical reviews›

Hyman ZHAN

Solid content; Unacceptably poor digital formatting - Buy digital copy elsewhere

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2018

As a developer that spent quite some time with C++, Rust is a very exciting option. I tried to learn from online tutorials but as a new and seemingly intimidating language, most tutorials only scratched the surface. I believe a solid book would come with more depth and coverage, hence this book. I have covered three chapters and contentwise, it has been great so far.

HOWEVER, the digital formatting is just unbearable. Come on, O' Reilly and Kindle, NO MONOSPACED FONT FOR CODE?!? Let me quote this from the book:
Constant width
Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

The book is great; formatting, not quite so. If you are picky about fonts, as I believe every programmer is, look elsewhere for a digital copy.

2 people found this helpful

Sort by

Filter by

163 global ratings | 69 global reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

Paul Jackson

pj@usa.net

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

I've just begun reading this book. It's quite readable (for a serious programming language book), by a couple of people with a depth of history with Rust and with a long history in other serious systems programming projects.

Earlier today I went looking for my first "Rust book", as Rust is at the top of my list as the next computer language that I want to learn. I started back in the 1970's with FORTRAN on CDC servers, and then with C inside Bell Labs on PDP 8's and 11's. Kernighan and Ritchie's original 1978 "C Programming Language" is the oldest "classic" language book on my shelf, which, like this Rust book, I purchased shortly after it was published.

Hopefully I will remember to return to this review, once I have gotten further into it. But so far, it's looking like a potential "classic."

Update #1: I've gotten a quarter of the way into the book. It's most excellent so far, combining a rare mix of a readable, conversational style with a coherent organization and meticulous accuracy both in the detail and in the conceptual, by a couple of authors who know their stuff, both Rust and systems programming. Unless the authors are the 1 in a 1000 who write polished prose in the first draft, there's the mark of some dang good editing here too.

Update #2: This book (at least the Kindle version I'm reading) lacks a Table of Contents, which I miss. The book is quite well organized, by chapter and subchapter, so I'm not sure why there is no Table of Contents. Perhaps the hardcopy edition will have such, but the "location" rather than "page number" positioning of a Kindle book makes a Table of Contents more difficult?

Update #3: Oops - sorry - there is a table of contents in the Kindle version. It doesn't appear as part of the inline text such as after the title and copyright pages, before the Introduction. Rather it's a special Kindle accessible table of contents (look for the 3 horizontal bar menu pull down icon, near the upper left), which you can access from any "page" in the book.

Update #4: Unlike Kernighan and Ritchie's original 1978 "C Programming Language" book, and unlike David Beazley's essential Python Essential Reference , Blandy's Programming Rust book is not the primary and essential language reference. In particular, the Index of Blandy's book is only about 15 pages, and I often find that a particular keyword for which I am looking is not in Blandy's Index. Beazley's far more thorough index is about 77 pages, for a similar sized book, of around 600 pages each. This reflects our changing times ... the world is online now, or at least Rust is. For example, over the last day, I was frustrated by my limited newbie understanding of the various string types in Rust (a rich and carefully thought out area of Rust), until I realized that searching in the online Rust documentation, doc.rust-lang.org for the language, library and tools, and in particular, for my particular questions of the moment, doc.rust-lang.org/std for Rust's standard library, was a much more rewarding way to learn what I needed to know next. (Yes, a 200 page book in 1978 could be a far more complete reference than a 600 page book today; the Rust of today is a far larger language than C was back in 1978.)

70 people found this helpful

Helpful

Dustin J. Mitchell

For Sytems Programmers who want to learn Rust

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

O'Reilly has a reputation for putting out substantially higher-quality books than most other publishers in this genre, and this book is a shining example. The text is comprehensive without being exhaustive. The examples are well-designed, and the concepts they embody carefully explained. There's just enough humor to make an engaging read cover-to-cover, while maintaining a high level of rigor and professionalism.

It's important to note that this is *not* a book for the novice programmer. It's a book for someone who knows one or more *other* languages well, and wants to start using Rust to build applications. Since Rust is designed for systems programmers, many of the comparisons are to other systems languages such as C, C++, and Java.

Compared to languages like Go or Python, Rust can be a bit adversarial for the beginner -- what experienced rusaceans refer to as "fighting with the type checker". Most of the reference material available online either assumes familiarity with Rust's checks, or explains it using formal rules. Neither approach is particularly helpful when you're fighting. Jim and Jason explain type and borrow checking from a practical perspective, highlighting a few common design patterns and how they are implemented in Rust (or why they are difficult to implement in rust).

I've been hacking away in Rust for a year or so now, writing toys and fiddling with Rust features, but only having finished this book do I feel like I could successfully design and build a large application in Rust.

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

A must have for people looking to get into Rust

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a must read for anyone intersted in Rust. The code examples are clear without being silly. The writing is deep without being overly technical.

The book does assume basic knowledge of C/C++ programming and system programming, or at least this will help you get the most out of it.

The book is also insightful, answering all those "what if" questions you'll have as you read sections. Finally, the authors are clearly experts, giving tips, and notes about best practices, and insight into Rust that can only come from experience.

I have read the Rust Book before this one. But this book has added a whole new dimensiom of knowledge I don't know I was missing.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ville Peurala

Excellent overview of Rust

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book gives the reader a broad overview of Rust’s concepts and has plenty of good code examples. This is not for beginners; you need significant experience in programming in order to understand the book, and preferably some C/C++ experience. But for an experienced, professional programmer interested in Rust, this is probably the best place to start.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mike Galero

A really good in-depth companion reference to the online references like The Rust Programming Language or Rust by Example

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

I've learned so much from this book. If you're new to Rust, it might be a little difficult to start with this book, but it's a really good in-depth companion reference to a more compact book like the free online book The Rust Programming Language or perhaps the Rust by Example reference if you prefer learning by example. My only complaint is that this book has a few errors here and there and the Errata system of O'Reilly has been down for the last couple of months. I'm compiling a list of the errors I've found and will submit them once the Errata system is back up.

The formatting of the code snippets and inline code in the Kindle edition is also not constant width as described in the typographical conventions section of the book. This is a known issue with many programming books' Kindle edition so it's not necessarily a criticism of this particular book, just a warning in case you're very particular with code formatting.

If it weren't for these minor concerns, the book would have been 4.5 or even 5/5 stars for me.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

B. Hughes

Excellent deep-dive into a complex language

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2018

Verified Purchase

Outstanding deep coverage of a complex language that is not easy to learn. I started learning Rust by reading the online documentation, but found the explanations in this book far more approachable, especially on the Rust-unique topics of lifetimes, borrowing, moves, etc. I also hugely appreciated the author's careful attention to showing memory layout of various data structures. Even though these are behind-the-scenes details to some extent, understanding memory layout provides a lot of context to how some of these structures work, particularly when you start talking about the types of references and slices, etc.

The chapter on concurrency, which really showcases the power of Rust's memory safety semantics, was probably the most illuminating. I remember the "ahah" moment I had learning about Elixir's concurrent data pipelines with channels, yet Rust supports this just as easily - and several other concurrency models to boot.

Just about my only criticism is that I thought the chapter on Generics could have used more and simpler examples, to build a better mental model of how they work. I still feel a bit weak on some of the more complex generic type definitions, and will have to read a bit more about this. This and a few other areas lead me to believe that this book is probably better approached by someone with an extensive background in systems programming (particularly with C++), which I do not really have (have only used C++ at a basic level years ago).

Highly recommended to anyone making a serious attempt at learning Rust - a seriously impressive language that has a lot of promise at modernizing systems programming.

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

EAL

An excellent guide to Rust for the experienced developer.

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

This an excellent, through guide to programming in Rust. It explains not only how Rust's unique compiler works but WHY it works the way it does. It's sections on lifetimes and traits I would consider must-reads for any Rust developer. Written in a clear, readable style that favors clarity and accuracy over conciseness or cleverness, it is an excellent guide to the language as it stands and should serve as a reference for years to come.
This is one of the best language references I have seen, comparing favorably to Fluent Python: Clear, Concise, and Effective Programming and The Go Programming Language (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) in it's ability to explain both the workings of the language in question and give a sense of that language's practical idioms and 'style'.

It's worth noting that the book assumes a high level of programming knowledge and gloss over parts of the language that work exactly like Rust's counterparts in the traditional C-style programming languages. This is welcome in a nearly 600-page tome, but may alienate some potential purchasers. If you don't have long-term programming experience in a language like Go, Python, Java, or preferably C/C++, this is not the book for you - at least not yet ;).

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Hyman ZHAN

Solid content; Unacceptably poor digital formatting - Buy digital copy elsewhere

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

J. Smith

Learning Rust? Buy this book.

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

Rust has superb documentation available online for free. So why buy this book? Simply put, it contains deep, thorough explanations of every aspect of the language. This is not simply a rehash of "The Book." The memory diagrams alone are worth the price of admission, and the detailed explanations of "how" it works and "why" certain design decisions were made are invaluable. I haven't seen a lot of this information anywhere else, so kudos to the authors for digging it up and putting a bow on it. There are plenty of clean and concise examples, and the prose is well written and laugh-out-loud funny in places. Learning Rust? Buy this book. You need it.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Laurence Lundblade

Clever, thoughtful with what you need to know

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

I like the writing style a lot. It is simple and direct and gives you the information you need. Since Rust is conceptually a new an interesting thing, I have to read the text several times for it to sink in, but that is OK. I much prefer this to a book that goes on too long which would make re reading it too much work.

It is a book that you can use to learn the language and you can refer back to. It will become a well-worn book.

It is not pedantic. It is not talk-down. But it makes big efforts to clearly layout what it explaining with consideration for what the reader might know of other programming languages.

Helpful

Need customer service? Click here

‹ See all details for Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development

5 star		76%
4 star		15%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development

›

Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development

Top positive review

Top critical review

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development › Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development

Top positive review

Top critical review

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development

›

Customer reviews