Learn Rust — the language that makes systems programming safe

Memory safety without a garbage collector. Concurrency without data races.

Rust is the programming language that has won "most loved" in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey every year since 2016. It achieves something previously thought impossible: the performance of C and C++ with memory safety guaranteed at compile time — no runtime overhead, no garbage collector, no data races.

Rust is genuinely hard to learn. The borrow checker — the system that enforces memory safety — thinks differently from any other language. Most programmers spend weeks fighting it before the mental model clicks. Once it does, the payoff is enormous: code that is both fast and provably safe.

Planana's AI tutor is particularly valuable for Rust learners because the learning curve is steep and non-linear. Your daily plan will guide you through the concepts in the order that builds understanding rather than frustration.

What you'll learn

Ownership & Borrowing

The core of Rust: each value has one owner, and references must obey strict lifetime rules — this is what makes memory safety possible without GC.

The Type System

Rust's expressive type system with structs, enums, generics, and traits — enabling zero-cost abstractions and compile-time guarantees.

Error Handling

Result and Option types for explicit, composable error handling — no exceptions, no null pointer surprises.

Lifetimes

How Rust tracks how long references are valid, preventing dangling pointers and use-after-free bugs at compile time.

Traits & Generics

Rust's approach to polymorphism and code reuse — more powerful than interfaces, with zero runtime cost.

Concurrency

Fearless concurrency: threads, channels, Mutex, and async/await — all checked by the compiler for data race safety.

Cargo & the Ecosystem

Rust's build system and package manager, and how to navigate crates.io to find and use the rich library ecosystem.

Why learn Rust?

Rust is increasingly used in systems programming, game engines, WebAssembly, embedded systems, and — significantly — in the Linux kernel and Windows kernel. Mozilla, Cloudflare, Discord, Amazon, and Microsoft have all adopted Rust for performance-critical components.

The career case for Rust is strong and growing: Rust engineers command some of the highest salaries in software, and the supply of experienced Rust programmers is still far behind demand. Learning Rust now puts you ahead of the curve.

Start learning Rust today

Tell Planana's AI tutor your goal and get a personalized daily study plan — free.