mre/idiomatic-rust

This repository collects resources for writing clean, idiomatic Rust code. You can find a sortable/searchable version of this list here.

Idiomatic coding means following the conventions of a given language. It is the most concise, convenient, and common way of accomplishing a task in that language, rather than forcing it to work in a way the author is familiar with from a different language. - Adapted from Tim Mansfield

Contributions welcome! To add missing resources, please refer to the contributing documentation.

⚙ Projects

• blessed.rs — An unofficial guide to the Rust ecosystem. Suggestions for popular, well-maintained crates.
• Canonical's Rust Best Practices — A curated collection of best practices for writing Rust code, covering coding standards from naming conventions to unsafe code usage.
• cheats.rs - Idiomatic Rust tips — A list of quick tips to make your code more idiomatic.
• clippy — A bunch of lints to catch common mistakes and improve your Rust code.
• Elements of Rust — A collection of software engineering techniques for effectively expressing intent with Rust.
• Patterns — A catalogue of design patterns in Rust.
• Possible Rust — A blog for intermediate Rust programmers exploring real-world code and design patterns.
• Rust Anthology — The best short-form writing about Rust, collected.
• Rust API Guidelines — An extensive list of recommendations for idiomatic Rust APIs.
• Rust by Example — A community driven collection of example code which follow Rust best practices.

🏋 Workshops

• Build your own JIRA with Rust — A test-driven workshop to learn Rust by building your own JIRA clone!
• Comprehensive Rust — A four day Rust course developed by the Android team, covering all aspects of Rust.
• Ferrous Systems Teaching Material — Free workshop material produced by Ferrous Systems for trainings.
• Hecto: Build your own text editor in Rust — This is a series of blog posts that shows you how to build a text editor in Rust
• Idiomatic Rust Workshop — A talk/workshop about idiomatic Rust code focusing on effective use of existing syntax and design patterns
• PingCAP talent plan — A series of training courses about writing distributed systems in Rust.
• Procedural Macros Workshop — A selection of projects designed to learn to write Rust procedural macros.
• Rust 101 — A Rust University course by tweede golf.
• Rust Development at Sentry — A document containing useful resources for getting started with Rust and adhering to Sentry coding principles.
• rust-lang/rustlings — Small exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code.

📖 Books

• Command Line Applications in Rust — A tutorial on how to write CLI apps in Rust, learning many aspects of the ecosystem.
• Command-Line Rust — Learn the language by writing Rust versions of common Unix coreutils.
• Discover the world of microcontrollers through Rust! — An introductory course on microcontroller-based embedded systems using Rust.
• High Assurance Rust — Developing secure and robust software, focusing on embedded-friendly data structures in Rust.
• Idiomatic Rust Snippets — Beginner-friendly guide to core Rust concepts—one of the best cheat sheets for Rust developers.
• Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development — A comprehensive Rust Programming Guide that covers most of Rust's features in detail.
• Rust Atomics and Locks — Helps Rust programmers of all levels gain a clear understanding of low-level concurrency.
• Rust Cookbook — Examples that demonstrate good practices to accomplish common programming tasks in Rust.
• Rust for Rustaceans — Covers how to design reliable, idiomatic, and ergonomic Rust programs based on best principles.

📰 Articles

2025

• Level Up your Rust pattern matching — Advanced pattern matching techniques and idiomatic usage.
• Be Simple — Advocates for simpler, more maintainable code in Rust.
• Pitfalls of Safe Rust — Essential guide to avoiding pitfalls even in safe Rust code.
• Flattening Rust's Learning Curve — Best practices for learning Rust and reducing adoption friction.
• Patterns for Defensive Programming in Rust — Defensive coding in Rust with best practices.
• Prototyping in Rust — Rapid development methodology and idiomatic practices showing how to prototype effectively in Rust.
• Cancelling async Rust — Guide to cancellation safety in async Rust with patterns for resource management.
• To panic or not to panic — Error handling strategies and when panicking is appropriate versus returning Result types.
• Designing Error Types in Rust Libraries — Approaches to structuring error handling in library APIs for clarity and usability.

2024

• The Mediocre Programmer's Guide to Rust — Practical Rust without perfectionism - a pragmatic development approach.
• Rust's Sneaky Deadlock With if let Blocks — Subtle lock holding pattern that can cause critical deadlock pitfalls.
• Rust Iterators Beyond the Basics — Advanced iterator patterns for functional programming in Rust.
• The Ultimate Guide to Rust Newtypes — Using newtypes for type safety and compile-time domain validation.
• How to Build Abstractions in Rust Applications — Building effective abstractions in Rust based on software design principles.
• Don't Worry About Lifetimes — Demystifying lifetime annotations with practical lifetime management patterns.
• When should I use String vs &str? — Guidance on choosing the right string type - a fundamental idiomatic Rust pattern.
• Async Rust can be a pleasure to work with (without Send + Sync + 'static) — Relaxing trait bounds for simpler async code and ergonomic async patterns for single-threaded contexts.
• Why choose async/await over threads? — Guidance on when to use async vs traditional threading to choose the right concurrency model.
• Three Kinds Of Unwrap — Understanding when and how to use different unwrap variants to prevent common panic-related bugs.
• Practical guide to Error Handling in Rust — Hands-on guide with practical examples for common error handling scenarios in real-world applications.

2023

• Aim For Immutability in Rust — Explains why variables are immutable in Rust by default.
• Compile-Time Invariants in Rust — Shows how macros can be used to enforce invariants at compile-time.

2021

• Rust Number Conversion: Don't Follow the Book... — A blog post discussing the best practices for number conversion in Rust.
• Hexagonal architecture in Rust — Describes how to build a Rust service using domain driven design and a test-first approach.
• Wrapping errors in Rust — Wrapping 'reqwest::Error' and a custom error type as an enum to make library usage easier.
• Aiming for idiomatic Rust — Discusses different ways to solve a popular coding puzzle, 'balanced brackets', in Rust.
• Naming Your Lifetimes — Explains how using longer, declarative lifetime names can help to disambiguate which borrow is which.

2020

• Are out parameters idiomatic in Rust? — Discusses the pros and cons of functions returning a value vs. modifying a parameter in-place.
• Guide on how to write documentation for a Rust crate — Writing good documentation with rustdoc including many examples.
• Learning Rust through open source and live code reviews — Covers patterns like 'FromStr' and exposing a CLI and a library in one crate.
• Refactoring Rust Transpiled from C — Describes how to lift a C-project that was automatically converted to unsafe Rust to safer, more idiomatic Rust.
• Context-preserving error handling — Explains how to use crates like 'thiserror' in combination with 'map_err' to add context to errors.

2019

• Rust Patterns: Enums Instead Of Booleans — Discusses how using enums instead of booleans can express intent more clearly in Rust.
• Taking string arguments in Rust — Discussing how to avoid subtle issues with string handling and when to use 'str' vs 'String'.
• Await a minute — Example code for moving from raw futures to async/await syntax to improve error handling.

2018

• Programming an ARM microcontroller in Rust at four different levels of abstraction — Demonstrates how Rust helps to move from low-level embedded code to high-level abstractions.

2017

• The balance between cost, useability and soundness in C bindings, and Rust-SDL2's release — Writing safe, sound, idiomatic libraries despite the limitations of the borrow checker.
• Math with distances in Rust: safety and correctness across units — How to create a system to cleanly and safely do arithmetic with lengths.
• Lessons learned redesigning and refactoring a Rust Library — 'RefCell', the builder pattern and more.
• Iteration patterns for Result & Option — Explores how to filter and partition iterators of Result and Option types idiomatically.

2016

• Idiomatic tree and graph like structures in Rust — Introduction to safe, dynamic, arena based tree structures without using lifetimes.
• Convenient and idiomatic conversions in Rust — Explains 'From', 'Into', 'TryFrom', 'TryInto', 'AsRef' and 'AsMut' with practical examples.
• Rustic Bits — Small things that make for rustic code.
• Ripgrep Code Review — An analysis of the popular 'ripgrep' tool's source code.
• Pretty State Machine Patterns in Rust — How to represent a State Machine in an expressive and understandable way in Rust.
• Teaching libraries through good documentation — How to use the full power of Rust's documentation support (e.g. doc tests).
• Elegant Library APIs in Rust — Many helpful tips and tricks for writing libraries in Rust.
• Russian Dolls and clean Rust code — How to use the full power of 'Option' and 'Result' (especially 'and_then()' and 'unwrap_or()').

2015

• Rayon: data parallelism in Rust — Writing elegant parallel code in Rust.
• Strategies for solving 'cannot move out of' borrowing errors in Rust — Practical tips to help understand the borrow-checker and move semantics.
• Effectively Using Iterators In Rust — Explanation of the 'Iter' and 'IntoIter' traits and how loops actually work in Rust.
• Creating a Rust function that returns a &str or String — How 'Into' and 'Cow' (Clone-on-write) work together to avoid allocations for string types.
• Creating a Rust function that accepts String or &str — How to make calling your code both ergonomic and fast (zero-allocation).
• Error Handling in Rust — Understanding and handling errors in Rust in an idiomatic way.
• Rust traits for developer friendly libraries — Thoughts about implementing good Rust libraries.

🎤 Talks

2024

• The Four Horsemen of Bad Rust Code — A talk about common pitfalls in Rust code like overengineering and premature optimization. [Video]

2023

• Tricks of the Trait: Enabling Ergonomic Extractors — Rust Nation UK, Feb. 2023 [Video]

2022

• Ergonomic APIs for hard problems — RustLab Conference, October 2022 [Video]
• Nine Rules for Elegant Rust Library APIs — Seattle Rust Meetup, Sep. 2022 [Video]

2020

• Macros for a More Productive Rust — RustConf 2020 [Video]

2019

• Making Rust Delightful — RustCon Asia 2019 [Video]

2018

• Idiomatic Rust - Writing Concise and Elegant Rust Code — FOSDEM 2018 [Video]

2017

• Idiomatic Rust Libraries — Rustfest Kiev [Video]

💬 Forum

2020

• Preferred way of passing Path-like types around?

2017

• An idiomatic way to sum up values in a multidimensional Array
• Which is more idiomatic? Functional, imperative or a mix?

📜 History

Coming from Python, I loved the guidelines on how idiomatic Python looks like. I was inspired by the likes of Peter Norvig, who wrote amazing articles on spellcheckers and sudoku solvers; and, of course, the Zen of Python. For Rust, there is no such thing as the Zen of Python, however, so I started collecting my own resources. The goal of this project is to create a peer-reviewed collection of articles/talks/repos, which teach idiomatic Rust style. It's a community project and you can contribute.

🔏 License

To the extent possible under law, Matthias Endler has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. Logo adapted from FreePik.com.