The curriculum

Your learning path 🗺️

Twenty-two bite-sized lessons across four levels, starting before code even begins. Each one has plain-English explanations, runnable examples, and exercises with hidden solutions. Finish a lesson, hit “Mark lesson complete,” and watch the bar fill up.

🍵 A good rhythm One lesson per sitting. Type the examples out yourself (no copy-paste; fingers remember better than eyes), do the exercises, then take the level quiz when you finish a level. No installs yet? Every example runs in the Rust Playground.

Level 0 Foundations 🌍 - never programmed? Start here. Otherwise, skim or skip

How a Computer Thinks

CPU, memory, binary, and what a program really is. No magic, just a very fast kitchen.

The Programmer's Toolbox

Terminals, paths, editors, libraries, and the vocabulary of the trade.

Version Control & Git

The industry's time machine: commits, branches, GitHub, and fearless experiments.

Standards & Conventions

Naming, formatting, semantic versioning, licenses, DRY, KISS, and YAGNI.

The Programmer's Mindset

Debugging method, asking great questions, escaping tutorial hell, and Rust's culture.

Level 1 Sprout 🌱 - total beginner, zero experience assumed

Hello, World!

Your first program, what a compiler actually is, and meeting Cargo.

Variables & Mutability

Labeled boxes for data, and why Rust locks the lid by default.

Data Types

Numbers, text, booleans, tuples, and arrays: Rust's raw ingredients.

Functions

Reusable recipes: inputs, outputs, and Rust's expression trick.

Control Flow

Making decisions with if, repeating with loops and ranges.

Level 2 The Rust Way 🔧 - the ideas that make Rust, Rust

Ownership

The big idea. One owner per value, and no garbage collector needed.

Borrowing & References

Lending values without giving them away, and the two sacred rules.

Structs & Methods

Bundle related data into your own types, then teach them tricks.

Enums & Pattern Matching

Option, match, and the end of null-pointer crashes.

Collections

Growable lists, owned text, and key-value maps: Vec, String, HashMap.

Error Handling

Result, the ? operator, and failing honestly.

Level 3 Power Tools 🚀 - advanced Rust, gently

Traits & Generics

Shared behavior and flexible code: Rust's answer to interfaces.

Lifetimes

The infamous 'a, demystified with a library card.

Closures & Iterators

Tiny functions in variables, and lazy assembly lines for data.

Smart Pointers

Box, Rc, and RefCell: ownership power tools.

Fearless Concurrency

Threads, channels, and shared state, all checked by the compiler.

Cargo, Modules & Tests

Organize, test, and ship real projects, plus where to go next.

🛠️ After Level 1, start building Reading lessons is not the same as writing programs. The Project Workshop gives you specs instead of scripts: build a guessing game, a real command-line tool, and a todo app that remembers between runs. Hints are there when you want them, and not before.

🏁 After each level Lock it in with the matching level quiz, and keep the cheat sheets open in a tab while you practice.