update with new rust version

[chenyukang]

A friend recently asked me for recommendations on a good project to begin learning Rust. I recalled that I started with a simple scheme interpreter years ago (https://github.com/chenyukang/rust-scm).

Later, I came across this project which I think might be a more suitable option. It’s well-tested and comes with an accompanying online book in Go, as well as your excellent blog post on the learning experience. I took a little time to review the code and updated it to address a few outdated Rust conventions.

thanks!

[pauldix]

hah, thanks! Long time since I thought about this one. I feel like learning Rust must be a totally different experience now. Both because the compiler is better and more forgiving/helpful and because the LLMs are so good at answering questions.

How was your experience?

[chenyukang]

I had a similar experience with you, the learning curve for Rust can be relatively steep, but once you overcome that initial hurdle, things become much smoother thereafter. When I first started learning Rust in 2014, there weren’t many tutorials available, and some features were still unstable, which made it tougher to get the hang of. I didn’t stick with Rust projects back then, but by 2021, I noticed the ecosystem and tools had matured considerably. Programming in Rust had become productive, so I decided to pick it up again.

Even LLMs are so good for answering questions, I still think writing a simple compiler or interpreter is a great way to study new languages, we need to get hands dirty anyway.

it's great you said the compiler are getting smarter, I also spent some spare time try to improve the diagnostics from compiler in recent years: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Achenyukang+is%3Aclosed, it's hardcoded AI in compiler :)

The Rust community cares about how compiler talks with developers, that is a good thing.