Rust Tutorial · Rust Basics · Lesson 1 of 29
Rust Introduction
What Rust is, why developers and companies choose it, and what a Rust program looks like.
What is Rust?
Rust is a compiled systems programming language focused on speed, memory safety and fearless concurrency. It gives you control comparable to C and C++, but its compiler rules out whole classes of bugs (null pointer dereferences, use-after-free, data races) before your program runs, without a garbage collector.
Rust is used for command-line tools, web services, databases, browsers, embedded devices, WebAssembly, and parts of the Linux and Windows kernels. It has topped developer surveys as the most admired language for years.
Hello, World!
fn main() {
println!("Hello, World!");
let language = "Rust";
println!("Welcome to {language}");
}
Output
Hello, World! Welcome to Rust
Run this on your computer — see “Get Started” for setup.
Every Rust program starts in fn main(). println! ends with ! because it's a macro, not a function.
The examples on this site show the program and its output; each was compiled with the Rust compiler (edition
2024) and run.
Test yourself
What does Rust use instead of a garbage collector to manage memory?
Reference counting everywhereOwnership rules checked at compile timeManual malloc and freeA virtual machine
Show answer
Answer: Ownership rules checked at compile time