Rust 101 (2017 edition)

Introduction to
Rust
(Programming Language)
Robert “Bob” Reyes
08 Sep 2017
#MozillaPH
#RustPH

#MozillaPH
#RustPH
If you’re on social media, please use
our official hashtags for this talk.

About Me
• Mozilla Rep for the PHL since 2011
• Technopreneur at TurfSitePH.net
• Technology Columnist at MB.com.ph
• Team Manager at SIPFC.org
• Dad of Xeon & Haswell

Target Audience
• People with some background in
programming (any language).
• People with zero or near-zero knowledge
about Rust (Programming Language).
• People who wants to learn a new
programming language.

Agenda
• Mozilla in the Philippines
• Installing Rust
• Hello World, the Rust way
• Intro to Cargo
• IDE Support
• Variables & Constants
• Simple Arithmetic Functions

History of Mozilla
On 23 Feb 1998,
Netscape Communications Corp.
created a project called
Mozilla (Mosaic + Godzilla).
Mozilla was launched 31 Mar 1998.

We have a NEW
brand identity…

Mozilla’s Mission
To ensure the Internet
is a global public
resource, open &
accessible to all.

Some stuff that we
are working on …

Areas of Contribution
 Helping Users
(Support)
 Testing & QA
 Coding
 Marketing
 Translation &
Localization
 Web Development
 Firefox Marketplace
 Add-ons
 Visual Design
 Documentation &
Writing
 Education
 Rust Development
http://join.mozillaph.org

Join MozillaPH now!
http://join.mozillaph.org

Internship
at Mozilla
https://careers.mozilla.org/university/

What is Rust?
• Rust is a systems programming language
that runs blazingly fast, prevents
segfaults, & guarantees thread safety.
• Compiles to Native Code like C++ & D.
• Strength includes memory safety &
correctness (just like in C).
“Rust is a modern native-code language
with a focus on safety.”

What is Rust?
• At present…
• Rust has more than 6.8K libraries, with
more than 85M downloads at crates.io
• More than 40 companies publically
using in production (Friends of Rust).

Mozilla ❤️ Rust
• Started as Mozillian Graydon Hoare’s
side project.
• He began working on Rust full time in 2009.
• Rust 1.0 released in 2015.
• New releases every six (06) weeks.
• Rust is Mozilla-supported, rather than
Mozilla-owned.

Rust & Servo
• One part of Mozilla is working on
improving Rust.
• Another part is building a brand new web
rendering engine using Rust: Servo.
• High-level goals of Servo:
• Implement parallel layout.
• Experiment with alternative rendering design.
• Investigate feasibility of complete JS GC integration.
• Incubator for experiments that can be reintegrated
into Firefox.

Rust & Firefox
• We are already shipping Rust code in
Firefox (inside the media stack).
• The process of re-writing existing C++
code to Rust is called Oxidation.
• Some of the most challenging projects
related to Oxidation is part of the
Quantum project.
• The amount of Rust code in Firefox will
increase over time.

Why Rust?
• Rust solves two core problems from
C++ & similar low-level programming
languages:
• Data races in multithreaded code.
• Use-after-free (UAF) errors.
• UAF’s are huge source of security
exploits in Firefox & other browsers.
• Both problems are addressed by making
“ownership” explicit.

Top 10 IoT Programming
Languages
1. C Language
2. C++
3. Python
4. Java
5. JavaScript
6. Rust
7. Go
8. Parasail
9. B#
10.Assembly
• No particular order.
• Based on popularity & following.

Programming Languages
Hardware
Machine Language
Assembly Language
High-Level Language
Fortran | C | Pascal
OO & Visual Languages
C++ | D | Rust

Ownership in Rust
• Encapsulates two (02) concepts:
• The lifetime of a value (i.e. when it is valid to
interact with it).
• Unique vs Shared Values.
• Leads to a few rules:
• Uniquely-owned values are destroyed when
they go out of scope.
• Only uniquely-owned values can be mutated.
• Borrowing a value means it is no longer
uniquely owned.

Ownership in Rust (Analogy)
• I have a coloring book, a marker & some
friends.
• If I leave, the coloring book & marker
leave with me.
• If a friend borrows the book, I can no
longer color it.
• My friends can also lend it to other friends.
• If someone leaves while my friends are
borrowing the book, they give it back before
leaving.

Ownership in Rust (Analogy)
• I can’t leave if the book is still borrowed.
• Either I wait, or I should have given it away.
• I can also lend someone the marker along with the
book, if they want to color in it.

How Does Ownership Help?
• Use-After-Free
• Can’t return/store pointer to an object that may
be deallocated before pointer.
• Can’t use immutable & mutable pointers to the
same object.
• Data Races
• Forced transfer ownership of data or copy when
using multiple threads.
• Only types that abide by compiler rules can be
shared – ensures type locking/atomic access is
used.

What is Race Condition?
• A race condition is…
• An undesirable situation.
• Occurs when a device or system
attempts to perform two or more
operations at the same time.
• But because of the nature of the device
or system, the operations must be done
in the proper sequence to be done
correctly.

Features of Rust
• Zero-cost abstractions
• Move semantics
• Guaranteed memory safety
• Threads without data races
• Trait-based generics
• Pattern matching
• Type inference
• Minimal runtime
• Efficient C bindings

Projects Using Rust
 Magic Pocket
 Dropbox's file storage system that powers their
Diskotech petabyte storage machines.
 Servo
 Mozilla's new parallel rendering engine developed
in collaboration with Samsung.
 OpenDNS
 Uses Rust in two of its components.
 Redox OS
 A microkernel operating system being developed
in Rust.

Projects Using Rust
 Xi Editor
 The xi editor project is an attempt to build a high
quality text editor, using modern software
engineering techniques.
 GNU uutils coreutils
 uutils is an attempt at writing universal (as in cross-
platform) CLI utils in Rust. This repo is to
aggregate the GNU coreutils rewrites.
 Neon
 A safe Rust abstraction layer for native Node.js
modules.

Installing Rust
• Installer for Windows, Mac OS X & Linux available via
https://www.rust-lang.org
• If you wish to run Rust on your local machine when
you’re offline.
• Rust Playground [https://play.rust-lang.org]
• If you are online, you may opt to use this one
instead.
• You may use ANY text editor to code in Rust.
• As a practice, please save your Rust code
using .rs file extension.

Function main()
• Every Rust program must have at least one (01)
function.
• Simplest possible function declaration is named as
“main”
fn main() {
}
• Functions can also take arguments
fn print_number(x:i32) {
println!(“x is: {}”, x);
}

helloworld.rs
fn main()
{
println!(“Hello world in Rust!”);
}

Cargo
• A tool that allows Rust projects to declare their various
dependencies & ensure that you’ll always get a
repeatable build.
• Cargo does:
1. Introduces two (02) metadata files with various bits
of project information.
2. Fetches & builds your project’s dependencies.
3. Invokes rustc or another build tool with the correct
parameters to build your project.
4. Introduces conventions to make working with Rust
projects easier.

Cargo
• To start a new project with Cargo, we invoke in the
command line:
cargo new hello_world --bin
• Cargo will generate the following files & folders:
 Cargo.toml [file]
 src [folder]
 main.rs [file]
• Acts as a manifest file
• Contains all of the metadata that Cargo needs to
compile your project.

TOML
• Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language
(or some say, Tom’s Own Markup Language)
• Created by Tom Preston-Werner
• Aims to be a minimal configuration file format that's
easy to read due to obvious semantics.
• Designed to map unambiguously to a hash table.
• Should be easy to parse into data structures in a wide
variety of languages.

Cargo.toml
[package]
name = "hello_world”
version = "0.1.0”
authors = ["Your Name <you@example.com>"]

IDE Support
• Modern IDEs give developers a massive increase in
productivity.
• Several community projects have provided an excellent
start towards IDE support.
• Good IDE support requires a number of components:
• The compiler must be modified to operate in a
different mode.
• Must provide name & type information from the
compiler to the IDE.
• Must write plugins for the IDEs themselves so they
know what to do with Rust projects.

IDE Support
• Available IDE Plugins:
• Eclipse [https://github.com/RustDT/RustDT]
• Intellij IDEA [https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust]
• Visual Studio [https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/VisualRust]
• Editor Plugins:
• Atom [https://atom.io/packages/language-rust]
• Emacs [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-mode]
• Sublime Text [https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Rust]
• Vim [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust.vim]
• Visual Studio Code
[https://github.com/saviorisdead/RustyCode]

More on IDE Support
https://www.rust-lang.org/ides.html

Variables
• Variable Declaration
fn main() {
let a:u8 = 123;
}
• Whereas
• a  variable
• u8  data type (unsigned; 0 or positive; 8-bit)
• 123  value of variable “a”

Numeric Data Types
• i8  8-bit signed integer
• u8  8-bit unsigned integer
• isize  pointer-size signed integer
• usize  pointer-size unsigned integer
• f32/f64  32/64-bit floating point

Mutability
• The ability to change something.
• Mutable variable binding.
• You’re allowed to change what the binding points to.
let x = 5;
x = 6;  will result to an error!
• We can use the mut keyword:
let mut x = 5;
x = 6;  no problem; no error!

Constants
• Aside from using variables, we can also declare
constants in Rust:
const PI:u8 = 3;
 no fixed memory address
 memory safety is NOT compromised
static X:i32 = 123;

Arithmetic Operators
+  addition & array/string concatenation
-  subtraction
*  multiplication
/  quotient
%  remainder

• Rust DOES NOT support ++ and – used in other
programming languages.
• a = a+1; or
• a += 1;
• b = b-1; or
• b -= 1;
• You may also use the following in Rust
• *=
• /=
• %=

let mut a = 2+3*4;
println!(“Answer = {}.”, a);
let mut a = (2+3)*4;

let mut a = 10/3;
let mut a = 10%3;
let a=10;
println!(“Remainder of {} / {}
= {}”, a, 3, (a%3));

Arithmetic Operators (eg1)
fn main() {
let num1 = 20;
let num2 = 10;
println!(“The SUM of the numbers =
{}”, (num1 + num2));
println!(”The DIFFERENCE of the
numbers = {}”, (num1 – num2));
… and so on

Arithmetic Operators (eg2)
fn main() {
let num1 = 20;
let num2 = 10;
let sum = num1 + num2;
let dif = num1 – num2;
let pro = num1 * num2;
let quo = num1 / num2;
println!(“The SUM of the numbers =
{}”, sum);
… and so on

Reference Materials
• The Rust Programming Language Book
• https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
• Rust by Example
• http://rustbyexample.com
• Rust User Forums
• https://users.rust-lang.org
• https://internals.rust-lang.org

https://rustph.slack.com
To request an invite:
https://rustphslack.herokuapp.com

Thank you!
Maraming salamat po!
http://www.mozillaphilippines.org
bob@mozillaph.org

Rust 101 (2017 edition)

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