Rust Roadmap
Phase 1:Rust Foundations
intermediate3 weeksOwnership & Borrowing
What makes Rust safe: stack versus heap, moves, references, and the borrow checker enforcing it all at compile time. This is the concept that trips up newcomers, so it's worth the time.
beginner2 weeksRust Syntax
Variables, types, functions, match expressions, enums, and structs. Familiar ground if you've coded before, and a quick way to get productive.
intermediate1 weekError Handling
Result and Option types and the ? operator. Rust handles failure without exceptions, which forces you to deal with errors up front instead of at runtime.
Phase 2:Rust's Type System
intermediate2 weeksTraits
Define shared behavior and implement Display, Iterator, and your own custom traits. This is how Rust does polymorphism, and you'll use it constantly.
intermediate2 weeksGenerics
Write code that works over many types with no runtime cost, since Rust resolves generics at compile time. Central to writing reusable Rust.
advanced2 weeksLifetimes
Tell the compiler how long references stay valid. It feels hard at first, but you rarely write lifetimes out by hand once the pattern clicks.
Phase 3:Systems & Concurrency
advanced3 weeksConcurrency
Threads, channels, Arc, and Mutex. Rust's type system guarantees no data races at compile time, which is a genuine advantage over almost every other language.
advanced3 weeksAsync Programming
async and await with the tokio runtime for building high-throughput asynchronous applications. This is how most production Rust services are written.
advanced2 weeksUnsafe Rust
When to reach for unsafe, what it actually unlocks, and how to use it without reintroducing the bugs safe Rust prevents. Needed less often than beginners fear.
Phase 4:Building Real Things
intermediate2 weeksCLI Tools
Build a command-line tool from scratch. The Rust ecosystem (clap for arguments, serde for data) makes this fast, and you ship a single self-contained binary.
advanced4 weeksWeb APIs with Axum
Axum is Rust's most ergonomic web framework. Build a REST API with async handlers, middleware, and a database connection to learn how real services fit together.
advanced4 weeksPortfolio Project
One real project (a CLI tool, a web API, or a system utility) deployed and pushed to GitHub. This is the thing you show employers, so make it something you'd use yourself.
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