Rust for NodeJS developers (I) - Why and how?

Working at a company that uses Node.js, Ruby, and Python is an enriching experience. Node.js offers a non-blocking I/O model and a robust ecosystem with npm, while Ruby stands out for its elegant syntax and focus on productivity. Python, on the other hand, is known for its simplicity and versatility, making rapid application development straightforward.

Despite these advantages, we are always open to exploring new technologies. Recently, Rust has caught our attention due to its high performance, memory safety and reliability.

In this series of articles, we will share the experience of learning Rust as a Node.js developer by building a GraphQL API in Rust.

Motivation

The decision to learn Rust for a NodeJS developer isn't a trivial one. However, there are compelling reasons why Rust is gaining popularity in web development, especially for web APIs and high-performance applications:

• Performance and Scalability: Rust offers significantly better performance than Node.js thanks to its ownership and borrowing system, which eliminates the need for garbage collection and ensures memory safety. This makes it an ideal choice for applications requiring high performance and constant scalability, particularly as workloads increase.

• Security and Reliability: Rust excels in its focus on memory safety, making it less susceptible to common vulnerabilities like memory leaks, buffer overflows, and dangling pointers. This feature is crucial for applications handling sensitive data, financial transactions, and critical systems.

• Developer Experience and Maintainability: Rust's strict type system and ownership rules might seem daunting initially, but they lead to more robust, maintainable, and less error-prone code in the long run. The Rust compiler catches errors at compile time rather than runtime, saving time and reducing the risk of introducing bugs in production.

• Community and Adoption: The Rust community is welcoming and highly supportive of beginners. The language is rapidly gaining popularity across diverse industries, including web development, embedded systems, and financial technology. This translates to a growing community of Rust developers and a wealth of available libraries, frameworks, and tools.

Challenges

Learning Rust presents unique challenges compared to other languages.

One of the most significant hurdles is Rust's strict ownership and borrowing system, designed to ensure memory safety without a garbage collector. This system requires a deep understanding of how data is managed and accessed, which can be initially complex for developers accustomed to more relaxed memory management in other languages.

Additionally, Rust's syntax differs significantly from these languages, requiring developers to adapt to its explicitness and pattern matching construct.

Despite these complexities, mastering Rust offers the promise of high-performance applications with robust memory safety guarantees, making the learning journey both demanding and rewarding.

Learning Rust

To embark on your Rust learning journey, we recommend leveraging the high-quality official resources provided by the Rust team itself:

• The Rust Programming Language Book: This comprehensive and detailed guide covers everything you need to know about the language, from basic concepts to advanced topics.

• Rust Documentation: The official Rust documentation serves as an extensive and well-organized reference, providing in-depth information on all aspects of the language, including syntax, standard libraries, tools and utilities, examples, and tutorials.

• Rustlings: An interactive tutorial that guides you through the core concepts of Rust through hands-on exercises.

• Rust Playground: An online execution environment that lets you experiment and test Rust code without the need to set up a local development environment.

In addition to the official resources, worth mentioning also:

• Rust by example: Is a collection of practical examples demonstrating how to use Rust to solve various problems. Each example include code, explanations, and links to the relevant documentation.

• The Rust interactive book: Essentially, the same as the official Rust book, but with the added benefit of quizzes, highlighting, visualizations, and more.

Installing Rust

To start writing and running Rust code, you'll need to install Rust on your system. The most recommended way to do this is using Rustup, the official Rust installer. You can follow the detailed instructions on the official Rust installation page.
Once Rustup is installed, you can run the following command to install the Rust toolchain:

rustup install stable

This will install the latest stable version of the Rust toolchain, which includes the compiler, standard library, and other essential tools.

With Rustup and the toolchain installed, you're ready to embark on your Rust programming journey. Embrace the challenges and rewards of learning this powerful and versatile language, and unlock its potential for building high-performance, secure, and maintainable web applications.

Upcoming

In future articles, we'll delve into the exciting process of building a GraphQL API from scratch using Rocket + SQLx + async-graphql, seize the opportunity to explore these resources and get ready to join us as we embark on this Rust adventure together!