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There are definitely easier languages to learn for complete beginners. When someone needs to learn what a "string" is, it's not helpful to immediately require t

by pornel 4y ago

There are definitely easier languages to learn for complete beginners. When someone needs to learn what a "string" is, it's not helpful to immediately require them to also learn the difference between a "heap-allocated string" and a "borrowed string". However, you don't need to be an expert to learn Rust. It even helps if you don't have too many expectations about OOP and pointers, because their Rust equivalents have different design patterns/idioms, and you may need to unlearn some things.

zozbot234 4y ago
> it's not helpful to immediately require them to also learn the difference between a "heap-allocated string" and a "borrowed string". That's largely a special case of the general difference between owned and referenced data, which applies to all non-trivial data types. "String" just happens to be the first of those that most novice coders will encounter. If anything, it makes a nice "toy" case for the general distinction.