Introduction - Rust for C#/.NET Developers

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Rust for C#/.NET Developers

Introduction

This is a (non-comprehensive) guide for C# and .NET developers that are<br>completely new to the Rust programming language. Some concepts and constructs<br>translate fairly well between C#/.NET and Rust, but which may be expressed<br>differently, whereas others are a radical departure, like memory management.<br>This guide provides a brief comparison and mapping of those constructs and<br>concepts with concise examples.

The original authors1 of this guide were themselves C#/.NET<br>developers who were completely new to Rust. This guide is the compilation of<br>the knowledge acquired by the authors writing Rust code over the course of<br>several months. It is the guide the authors wish they had when they started on<br>their Rust journey. That said, the authors would encourage you to read books<br>and other material available on the Web to embrace Rust and its idioms rather<br>than attempting to learn it exclusively through the lens of C# and .NET.<br>Meanwhile, this guide can help answer some questions quickly, like: Does Rust<br>support inheritance, threading, asynchronous programming, etc.?

Assumptions:

Reader is a seasoned C#/.NET developer.

Reader is completely new to Rust.

Goals:

Provide a brief comparison and mapping of various C#/.NET topics to their<br>counterparts in Rust.

Provide links to Rust reference, book and articles for further reading on<br>topics.

Non-goals:

Discussion of design patterns and architectures.

Tutorial on the Rust language.

Reader is proficient in Rust after reading this guide.

While there are short examples that contrast C# and Rust code for some<br>topics, this guide is not meant to be a cookbook of coding recipes in the<br>two languages.

The original authors of this guide were (in alphabetical order):<br>Atif Aziz, Bastian Burger, Daniele Antonio Maggio, Dariusz Parys and<br>Patrick Schuler.