Rust Bootstrap Course for C/C++ Programmers

Course Overview

• Course overview
  • The case for Rust (from both C and C++ perspectives)
  • Local installation
  • Types, functions, control flow, pattern matching
  • Modules, cargo
  • Traits, generics
  • Collections, error handling
  • Closures, memory management, lifetimes, smart pointers
  • Concurrency
  • Unsafe Rust, including Foreign Function Interface (FFI)
  • no_std and embedded Rust essentials for firmware teams
  • Case studies: real-world C++ to Rust translation patterns
• We'll not cover async Rust in this course — see the companion Async Rust Training for a full treatment of futures, executors, Pin, tokio, and production async patterns

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Self-Study Guide

This material works both as an instructor-led course and for self-study. If you're working through it on your own, here's how to get the most out of it:

Pacing recommendations:

Chapters	Topic	Suggested Time	Checkpoint
1–4	Setup, types, control flow	1 day	You can write a CLI temperature converter
5–7	Data structures, ownership	1–2 days	You can explain why let s2 = s1 invalidates s1
8–9	Modules, error handling	1 day	You can create a multi-file project that propagates errors with ?
10–12	Traits, generics, closures	1–2 days	You can write a generic function with trait bounds
13–14	Concurrency, unsafe/FFI	1 day	You can write a thread-safe counter with Arc<Mutex<T>>
15–16	Deep dives	At your own pace	Reference material — read when relevant
17–19	Best practices & reference	At your own pace	Consult as you write real code

How to use the exercises:

• Every chapter has hands-on exercises marked with difficulty: 🟢 Starter, 🟡 Intermediate, 🔴 Challenge
• Always try the exercise before expanding the solution. Struggling with the borrow checker is part of learning — the compiler's error messages are your teacher
• If you're stuck for more than 15 minutes, expand the solution, study it, then close it and try again from scratch
• The Rust Playground lets you run code without a local install

When you hit a wall:

• Read the compiler error message carefully — Rust's errors are exceptionally helpful
• Re-read the relevant section; concepts like ownership (ch7) often click on the second pass
• The Rust standard library docs are excellent — search for any type or method
• For async patterns, see the companion Async Rust Training

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Table of Contents

Part I — Foundations

1. Introduction and Motivation

• Speaker intro and general approach
• The case for Rust
• How does Rust address these issues?
• Other Rust USPs and features
• Quick Reference: Rust vs C/C++
• Why C Developers Need Rust
  • Common C vulnerabilities
  • Illustration of C vulnerabilities
• Why C++ Developers Need Rust
  • C++ challenges that Rust addresses
  • C++ memory safety issues (even with modern C++)

2. Getting Started

• Enough talk already: Show me some code
• Rust Local installation
• Rust packages (crates)
• Example: cargo and crates

3. Basic Types and Variables

• Built-in Rust types
• Rust type specification and assignment
• Rust type specification and inference
• Rust variables and mutability

4. Control Flow

• Rust if keyword
• Rust loops using while and for
• Rust loops using loop
• Rust expression blocks

5. Data Structures and Collections

• Rust array type
• Rust tuples
• Rust references
• C++ References vs Rust References — Key Differences
• Rust slices
• Rust constants and statics
• Rust strings: String vs &str
• Rust structs
• Rust Vec<T>
• Rust HashMap
• Exercise: Vec and HashMap

6. Pattern Matching and Enums

• Rust enum types
• Rust match statement
• Exercise: Implement add and subtract using match and enum

7. Ownership and Memory Management

• Rust memory management
• Rust ownership, borrowing and lifetimes
• Rust move semantics
• Rust Clone
• Rust Copy trait
• Rust Drop trait
• Exercise: Move, Copy and Drop
• Rust lifetime and borrowing
• Rust lifetime annotations
• Exercise: Slice storage with lifetimes
• Lifetime Elision Rules Deep Dive
• Rust Box<T>
• Interior Mutability: Cell<T> and RefCell<T>
• Shared Ownership: Rc<T>
• Exercise: Shared ownership and interior mutability

8. Modules and Crates

• Rust crates and modules
• Exercise: Modules and functions
• Workspaces and crates (packages)
• Exercise: Using workspaces and package dependencies
• Using community crates from crates.io
• Crates dependencies and SemVer
• Exercise: Using the rand crate
• Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock
• Cargo test feature
• Other Cargo features
• Testing Patterns

9. Error Handling

• Connecting enums to Option and Result
• Rust Option type
• Rust Result type
• Exercise: log() function implementation with Option
• Rust error handling
• Exercise: error handling
• Error Handling Best Practices

10. Traits and Generics

• Rust traits
• C++ Operator Overloading → Rust std::ops Traits
• Exercise: Logger trait implementation
• When to use enum vs dyn Trait
• Exercise: Think Before You Translate
• Rust generics
• Exercise: Generics
• Combining Rust traits and generics
• Rust traits constraints in data types
• Exercise: Trait constraints and generics
• Rust type state pattern and generics
• Rust builder pattern

11. Type System Advanced Features

• Rust From and Into traits
• Exercise: From and Into
• Rust Default trait
• Other Rust type conversions

12. Functional Programming

• Rust closures
• Exercise: Closures and capturing
• Rust iterators
• Exercise: Rust iterators
• Iterator Power Tools Reference

13. Concurrency

• Rust concurrency
• Why Rust prevents data races: Send and Sync
• Exercise: Multi-threaded word count

14. Unsafe Rust and FFI

• Unsafe Rust
• Simple FFI example
• Complex FFI example
• Ensuring correctness of unsafe code
• Exercise: Writing a safe FFI wrapper

Part II — Deep Dives

15. no_std — Rust for Bare Metal

• What is no_std?
• When to use no_std vs std
• Exercise: no_std ring buffer
• Embedded Deep Dive

16. Case Studies: Real-World C++ to Rust Translation

• Case Study 1: Inheritance hierarchy → Enum dispatch
• Case Study 2: shared_ptr tree → Arena/index pattern
• Case Study 3: Framework communication → Lifetime borrowing
• Case Study 4: God object → Composable state
• Case Study 5: Trait objects — when they ARE right

Part III — Best Practices & Reference

17. Best Practices

• Rust Best Practices Summary
• Avoiding excessive clone()
• Avoiding unchecked indexing
• Collapsing assignment pyramids
• Capstone Exercise: Diagnostic Event Pipeline
• Logging and Tracing Ecosystem

18. C++ → Rust Semantic Deep Dives

• Casting, Preprocessor, Modules, volatile, static, constexpr, SFINAE, and more

19. Rust Macros

• Declarative macros (macro_rules!)
• Common standard library macros
• Derive macros
• Attribute macros
• Procedural macros
• When to use what: macros vs functions vs generics
• Exercises