I use a different approach to learning new languages: I try to find out why the language really exists. Often, there is a very good reason that justifies all th

I use a different approach to learning new languages: I try to find out why the language really exists. Often, there is a very good reason that justifies all the work of creating a new language. Often, this has more to do with the environment, runtime, etc., and the features of the language merely exist to serve that purpose. If that were not true, someone probably would have used an existing language and changed the runtime. For rust, it seems to exist to bring modern, safe language features to a minimal C-like runtime existence by doing all of the work in the compiler. C has continued to thrive all of this time because it has a minimal runtime and a stable ABI defined on nearly every platform. Rust has a minimal runtime and supports the C ABI very well, so it has a great chance to have a big impact in areas where C/C++ might otherwise be used less safely and less productively. So my focus when learning rust is how to use the C FFI while still writing idiomatic rust. It's harder to learn that way, but I find it more satisfying, especially in cases where I don't have an immediate project that's going to use the language. The fact is, no matter how many programming puzzles I solve in rust, it's not going to make it any more likely that I will rely on it for anything but a toy or hobby project. But learning the rust FFI does make it more likely I will rely on it in the future. Puzzles can be solved in any language; weird corner cases in the FFI cannot.