🦀 Rust Fundamentals Reading List

Recommended prep materials for Solana Rust Security Bootcamp applicants

Before you step into the bootcamp, we expect a certain level of fluency in Rust.
If you’ve worked with the concepts below and can reason about them without copy-pasting StackOverflow, you’re more than ready.

If any of the material here feels foreign or overwhelming, the course will likely be too advanced. No worries, and use this guide to upskill and catch the next cohort.

⚫️You should be confident with:

• Common Programming Concepts (Chapter 3)
  Variables, mutability, functions, primitive types, control flow.
  
• Understanding Ownership (Chapter 4)
  Ownership, borrowing, references, lifetimes.
  
• Structs & Enums (Chapter 5 & 6.1)
  Defining data types and attaching behavior.
  
• Collections: Vectors, Strings, HashMaps (Chapter 8)
  
• Error Handling: panic!, Result (Chapter 9.1 & 9.2)
  
• Closures & Iterators (Chapter 13.1 & 13.2)
  
• Pattern Matching (Ch. 6.2, 6.3, 19)
  match, if let, exhaustive enums and destructuring.

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⚫️What you should be familiar with (and brush up on now):

• Memory Layout of a Process
  Stack vs Heap vs Static data: essential for secure systems programming.
  
• Box: Heap Allocation in Rust (Chapter 15.1)
  
• Rust References (std docs)
  
• Raw Pointers & Unsafe Rust
  Also check: ptr module, pointer primitive, Rust Reference Chapter 17
  
• Attributes - Rust By Example

⚫️Historical & Conceptual Reads (for those who like context)

• How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most loved programming language
  
• Rust - memory safety without a garbage collector
  
• Fearless Concurrency with Rust
  
• Rust Means Never Having to Close a Socket
  
• Abstraction Without Overhead: Traits in Rust
  
• A Unique Perspective on Rust - Matt Brubeck
  
• The Problem With Shared Mutability

Reminder

Apply now or sharpen your edge for the next cohort: rektoff.xyz/bootcamp