Welcome

Dear Reader,

Thanks for taking a chance and buying this early release book on the Rust programming language and the internals of computer systems. I hope that you'll be rewarded with a fun, informative read!

Part 1: Just Enough Rust will provide a quick-fire introduction to the Rust language by working through projects that begin to introduce concepts that are expanded upon later in the book, such as implementing a File API.

Part 2: Programming from the Ground Up (Almost) will shift your focus towards the computer. You will learn how data is represented at various levels between the application, operating system and hardware. Rust language features will be introduced as required.

Part 3: Concurrent and Parallel Programming will walk through the tools that computers offer to get work done in parallel. Its primary goal will be to explain how multiple threads can cooperate and coordinate. A large example—building a graph that can be distributed in multiple ways—will be extended throughout several chapters.

Finally, Part 4: Extending Applications Up and Out will show Rust being used to build up software components to extend large software projects. These projects demonstrate systems programming “with the system” rather than systems programming “of the system”. Part 4 will deal with the complexities of handling multiple CPU/OS pairs from the same code base.