🦀 rust-playground

A personal playground to learn, explore, and experiment with the Rust programming language.

This repo is organized as a series of small, self-contained projects — from simple syntax demos to CLI tools and web backends.

---

📚 Learning Plan

🧭 Why Rust?

As a Machine Learning Engineer, learning Rust offers:

• Systems-level control (great for performance-critical workloads)
• Memory safety without garbage collection
• Potential to build ML tooling or WebAssembly-backed inference

---

🚀 Phases

🟢 Phase 1: Core Language

✅ Goal: Understand Rust syntax, memory model, and toolchain

Week	Topic	Project Idea
1	Install + hello_world	Print "Hello, Rustacean!"
1	Variables, Functions	Unit converter (e.g., km → mi)
2	Ownership & Borrowing	Text reversal tool
2	Structs, Enums	Basic task manager (CRUD)
3	Pattern Matching	FizzBuzz + file I/O
3	Collections	Word frequency counter

🟡 Phase 2: Intermediate Rust

✅ Goal: Build real-world utilities and CLI tools

Week	Topic	Project Idea
4	Error Handling	CSV parser / summary tool
4	Modules & Crates	Random password generator
5	Traits & Generics	Pluggable calculator engine
5	Testing & Macros	Unit-tested CLI quiz

🔴 Phase 3: Real Apps

✅ Goal: Understand web, async, and systems programming

Week	Topic	Project Idea
6	Async / tokio	File downloader with progress bar
6	Web APIs (actix / axum)	Joke API server
7	WebAssembly	Web-based Rust calculator (via WASM)
8	FFI / C Interop	Call Rust from Python (or vice versa)

---

🛠️ Setup

1. Install Rust

brew install rustup
rustup-init
source $HOME/.cargo/env
rustc --version

2. Install CLI tools

cargo install cargo-edit      # Add/remove dependencies easily
cargo install cargo-outdated  # Show outdated crates

3. Recommended VSCode Extensions

Auto-suggested by .vscode/extensions.json:

• rust-analyzer
• CodeLLDB
• Dependi
• Rust Test Lens
• Error Lens
• Better TOML
• Bracket Pair Colorizer 2

🧠 Resources

• The Rust Book (Official)
• Rust by Example
• Crates.io (Libraries)
• Cheats.rs – Handy Cheatsheet
• Are We Learning Yet? (ML in Rust)

🙋‍♂️ About

Created by Sagar — ML engineer exploring systems programming and low-level performance. Join my Newsletter - http://dhokla-express.beehiiv.com