Episode 72: The Power and Safety of Rust with Matan Kushner

Enjoy the Vue

Our discussion today is focused on Rust and why you may want to explore this popular language. Here to help us get into the subject is Matan Kushner, who is a developer at CodeSandbox, while also working on AniList and Starship! We start off our chat taking a survey of the panel's back-end experience before Matan broaches the topic of Rust and why he initially dedicated the time to learn it. Our guest explains why he values the language and the fail-safe type features of the strict compiler, which allow a lot more peace of mind around shipping. We also get to hear from Matan about the best ways to go about learning Rust and the benefits of having a singular source of knowledge to this end. We also find time to discuss the community attached to Rust, how Matan uses it in his different endeavors, and how the language can be used for in-browser development. We round out the episode with some colorful picks that might excite you, so for all this and a whole lot more fun conversation, join us on Enjoy the Vue!

Key Points From This Episode:

  • Matan and the rest of the panel's experience with back-end work.
  • The basics of Rust and what differentiates it from older, similar languages.
  • Reasons that Matan pursued learning Rust, despite the intensive time investment.
  • How the strict compiler in Rust helps developers root out errors and ship better code.
  • The helpful open-source documentation for Rust that is available.
  • Rust's fast rise in popularity and Matan's thoughts on the main reasons for this.
  • How Vue and in-browser developers can make use of Rust with the help of WebAssembly.
  • Matan shares his experiences of the welcoming and helpful Rust community.
  • The possible inspiration behind the mysterious naming of Rust.
  • Matan's recommendation for getting started in Rust and making it through 'The Rust Book'.
  • Examples of good typical first projects in Rust!
  • Where to find Matan online and the array of exciting projects he is currently a part of.
  • This weeks' picks; TV shows, Planet Scale, the Otamatone, and opinions on AirPods.

Tweetables:

“I particularly have been working a lot on back-end, though my history lies primarily with front-end. This is my first full-time job, where back-end was a real responsibility.” — @matchai [0:03:05]

“Rust makes it, so that you can have both very, very fast, low-level processing, while having the guarantees that exist in higher level languages, like JavaScript.” — @matchai [0:05:09]

“I personally picked up Rust in an effort to build Starship, which is, it's an open source project of mine.” — @matchai [0:07:32]

“It is a very strict language, but in all the best ways. You can't run into impossible states. You can't run into unaccounted errors. Rust will tell you at compile time, if any possible error state can happen, which makes you very confident in the code you ship.” — @matchai [0:09:45]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Special Guest: Matan Kushner.

Audio Player

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