The journey begins

TL;DR: I realized gaps in my Rust fundamentals after a tough interview (hello Cow). I’m going back to basics: reading the Rust books end-to-end and writing short posts about core concepts.

Why I’m writing this

At the end of October 2025, my previous company, Metagravity, shut down. As I started looking for a new role, the rejections piled up. Some were fair, I’m missing a few in-demand skills (Kubernetes is hot right now). Others cut deeper: my Rust knowledge wasn’t as solid as I thought. One interview made that painfully clear. A question about Rust’s Cow (copy-on-write) put me on the spot. I knew the concept, but I hadn’t used it in Rust, and I struggled with the problem. Stress took over, and I even stumbled on basics. That shook my confidence. After a few days of reflection, I took it as a wake-up call: I’ve had a strong career as a software engineer, but my Rust fundamentals need work.

When I first learned C, I read The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie. When I learned C++, I read C++ How to Program by Deitel and Deitel. After 17 years as a software engineer, I started to work professionally with Rust in 2023. I started to read The Rust Programming Language and the Brown University edition, but I skimmed them, and started to code right away. I learned numerous things on the job, but I never really took the time to solidify my knowledge.

What I’ll do next

So I decided to go back to basics. I will read Rust books from cover to cover, and write blog posts about what I learn. This will help me solidify my knowledge, and also share what I learn with others. I'll aim to write small, "byte-sized" posts that can be read in less than 10 minutes, explaining a core concept, or a specific feature of Rust or its standard library.

This is the first post in this journey. I hope you will find it useful.
If you’re learning Rust too, subscribe or leave a comment with topics you’d like me to cover.