The Rust programming language has earned a reputation in the tech industry because of its built-in package manager and its focus on memory safety and performance. Rust is the most-loved language among developers, according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020, and software developers want to have at least a basic knowledge of Rust. If you are going to learn about Rust concepts, you need the best Rust books.
We have compiled a list of the 10 best books for Rust developers. They can give anyone who uses Rust an excellent understanding of the language, whether you are a beginner or someone with advanced knowledge of the similar C++ programming language. This article provides the best books to learn Rust and an overview of how each book will improve your understanding of Rust and your programming skills.
How Can I Choose the Best Books for Rust Programming?
You can choose the best books for Rust programming based on your level of knowledge of functional programming in Rust. Rust newbies should look for books offering essential programming concepts and Rust language basics. However, if you are an experienced developer, you should focus on more difficult concepts that offer a deep dive into Rust uses.
There is a wide range of books on the Rust programming language, and selecting the best ones can be challenging. Regardless, the best Rust books will usually have good reviews, credible authors, and a detailed index.
Tips for Choosing the Best Rust Books
- Be specific about what you want to learn. To choose the best book to learn Rust, you should have a good idea about what you hope to achieve with the book. When you get book options that meet your requirements, you will be able to narrow them down to make a suitable choice.
- Read book reviews. Book reviews provide an overview of a book to potential readers. A reviewer expresses a viewpoint and backs it up with evidence from the book. However, it is essential to remember that not everyone shares the same view.
- Go through the table of contents. The table of contents provides an overview of the key topics covered in the book. If the topics you want to learn about do not exist in the table of contents, you can assume that the book’s content will be too brief to be useful.
- Check the author of the book. When choosing a book on Rust programming, ensure that the author is professional and credible. Professional authors produce well-researched, well-organized, and well-focused books.
- Look at the book’s index. An excellent book needs a decent index that contains the keywords you need and arranges them so that you can find relevant information in other parts of the book. Check the index for the terms you’re looking for. If they do not appear in the index, you will not be able to find them in the book.
The 10 Best Rust Books: An Overview
| Name | Publisher | Topics Covered |
|---|---|---|
| Beginning Rust: From Novice to Professional | Apress | Basics of Rust, object oriented features, heterogeneous data structures |
| Beginning Rust Programming | Wiley | Relational databases, device programming, web communications |
| The Complete Rust Programming Reference Guide | Packt Publishing | Multi-threaded programming, application profiling, designing data structures |
| Hands-On Microservices with Rust | Packt Publishing | RESTful microservices with Rust, reactive microservices, asynchronous programming |
| Hands-On Rust: Effective Learning Through 2D Game Development and Play | The Pragmatic Programmers | Rust fundamentals, game development |
| Mastering Rust | Packt Publishing | Memory safety, concurrency, type system |
| Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development | O’Reilly Media | Memory management, concurrency in Rust, unsafe code |
| Rust in Action | Manning Publications | File manipulation, language foundations, networking |
| The Rust Programming Language | No Starch Press | Binding variables, ownership and borrowing, error handling |
| Rust Web Programming | Packt Publishing | Data persistence, unit tests, web development |
The 10 Best Rust Books: A Closer Look
In this section, we provide an overview of each of the best Rust books to help you on your Rust journey. We’ll share whether they cover the basic concepts of Rust or more advanced concepts, if they talk about high-level features, whether they give practical examples and code examples, and more.
Beginning Rust: From Novice to Professional
- Author: Carlo Milanesi
- Best for: Beginners, advanced programmers new to Rust
Beginning Rust covers the core concepts of Rust, including how to identify objects, manage execution flow, and deal with primitive types. You will also gain a solid understanding of how iterators, memory allocation, inputs, and outputs.
Once you have learned these fundamental skills, you will be able to quickly construct robust Rust applications by managing errors and using Rust’s object oriented features. You simply need a basic understanding of programming, preferably in C or C++, to get the most out of this book.
Beginning Rust Programming
- Author: Ric Messier
- Best for: Beginners, students who are new to programming
Developers who want to create games like Hangman will benefit from this book. You will start with the fundamentals and work your way up to solving real-world computer science issues. You will also learn how to apply Rust’s advanced type system and ownership model to ensure memory security and thread safety, and how to integrate Rust alongside other programming languages and within embedded devices.
The Complete Rust Programming Reference Guide
- Author: Rahul Sharma, Vesa Kaihlavirta, Claus Matzinger
- Best for: Advanced Rust developers
One of the best Rust programming books for advanced Rust developers is The Complete Rust Programming Reference Guide. Advanced developers’ experience with programming helps them refer to this practical guide without needing explanations of basic Rust concepts.
This book teaches Rust implementation, backtracking, and dynamic programming. You will also better understand Rust for systems programming, network programming, and the web.
Hands-On Microservices with Rust
- Author: Denis Kolodin
- Best for: Students who have a basic knowledge of Rust
This book will show you how to work with modern web frameworks and crates, with real-world examples for building RESTful microservices using the Rust programming language. You will learn about reactive programming and asynchronous programming, as well as how to divide your web application into concurrent actors. Several examples of HTTP handling with manageable memory allocation are included in this book.
Hands-On Rust: Effective Learning Through 2D Game Development and Play
- Author: Herbert Wolverson
- Best for: Beginners, gamers
Hands-On Rust is a great Rust programming book for Rust beginners and gamers because you will be making games the entire time you are learning Rust. You will begin by creating a basic program. After you have gotten used to your developer environment, you will master the fundamentals of Rust by building games like a 2D dungeon crawler game and a Flappy Bird-style game.
Mastering Rust
- Authors: Rahul Sharma, Vesa Kaihlavirta
- Best for: Beginners, intermediate developers
This book will reveal how to use Rust for systems programming, network programming, and even web development. With this book’s runnable examples, you will also become familiar with memory-safe code, efficient asynchronous networking programs, idiomatic Rust libraries, and advanced macros.
Mastering Rust includes a mix of theory and hands-on exercises to help you learn core skills and gain knowledge, with exercises to help you cement the key concepts of the language. Students who want to be proficient in Rust should read this book.
Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development
- Author: Jim Blandy, Jason Orendorff, Leonora F. S. Tindall
- Best for: Programmers who want to learn Rust
Programming Rust will provide any reader with a detailed knowledge of programming in Rust. It explains how Rust bridges the gap between performance and safety and how you might benefit from it. Memory management, ownership, unit tests, generic code, iterators, collections, closures, and concurrent code are some subjects this book covers.
Rust in Action
- Author: Tim McNamara
- Best for: Beginners, intermediate programmers
This Rust programming book is a complete guide that explores various systems programming principles and approaches while introducing the Rust programming language. You will learn Rust by delving into the inner workings of computers. Persistent storage, memory, and networking are subjects you will learn.
The book walks you through how to use Rust to extend other programs and shows you how to develop fast code. You will learn about parallel and concurrent programming as well.
The Rust Programming Language
- Author: Steve Klabnik, Carol Nichols
- Best for: Beginners, programmers that are new to Rust
This is the official book of Rust. It begins with the fundamentals, such as creating functions, selecting data types, and using bind variables before moving on to more advanced concepts like ownership and borrowing, lifetimes, and traits, as well as testing, error handling, and effective refactoring. Additionally, this comprehensive guide teaches generic functions, smart pointers, multithreading, trait objects, and advanced pattern matching.
Rust Web Programming
- Author: Maxwell Flitton
- Best for: Advanced users, web developers
Rust Web Programming is a good Rust programming book for an experienced developer who is new to Rust. With this Rust programming book, you will study basic and advanced Rust concepts, create scalable web applications, and develop data models in Rust to interact with the database.
Alternative Ways to Learn Rust
You can pair your books with another learning medium if you wish to learn Rust quickly and effectively as a self-taught programmer. This way, you will get a variety of inputs and won’t become bored with only one type of learning.
You could take online courses on sites like Udemy, which offers lessons on the Rust language for beginners and experienced developers. You could also enroll in a top coding bootcamp that teaches Rust, which will help you enhance your programming skills and introduce you to basic and advanced features of Rust.
Is Learning Rust Worth It?
Yes, learning Rust is worth it. Rust is one of the easiest programming languages to learn. It is fast, and it does not require garbage collection because of its memory management rules. Additionally, many big companies use Rust worldwide, and Rust developers earn an average salary of $116,000 per year, according to ZipRecruiter.
Best Rust Books FAQ
The best way to learn the Rust language is to implement the language’s best practices. Reading the best Rust books and practicing small Rust code tasks until the concepts of borrow checking become apparent is the widely suggested method. After that, you’ll be able to move on to more real-world projects and consult the official Rust documentation for anything you need.
Yes, a beginner can learn Rust because Rust is a language that anyone can learn. You can start from scratch if you have no programming knowledge. You also don’t need any prior knowledge of computer science. There is a wide variety of books and courses available for beginners.
Yes, you can learn Rust without C. Learning C is not compulsory, but, because the languages belong to the same family, knowing C will undoubtedly aid your learning of Rust.
Rust is a low-level programming language with direct hardware and memory access, making it ideal for embedded and bare-metal development. You can use Rust to create control systems and microcontroller programs.
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