Learning path

Rust Developer Roadmap

What to learn, in order, to work as a Rust developer: the language through ownership, borrowing, Result, generics and traits, the command line, Git and SQL, then data structures and algorithms written under the borrow checker, and code a team can maintain. Expect a steeper first month than in most languages. Free, hands-on, in your browser.

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219,270+ codders enrolled across these courses

582 lessons539 challenges2,446 quiz questions

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A path certificate at the end, plus 13 along the way

The Rust developer roadmap, step by step

17 courses6 sections582 lessons539 challenges2,446 quiz questions

Each step is made of existing Coddy courses, and every Start button opens them in Rust. Take the steps in order, or start with the one you are missing; progress is saved per course.

1
Step 1
Rust, through the borrow checkerDedicated page
Start this stepStartThree sections. Fundamentals covers variables and mutability, shadowing, match, loops, functions, arrays and mutable references; Logic & Flow covers vectors, structs, hash maps, Option, Result and the ? operator, string slices and closures; Object Oriented Programming covers what that means in Rust (methods on structs, modules and privacy, enums with data, generics, traits, trait bounds and trait objects) and patterns such as newtype and From and Into. Ownership and borrowing run through all three and are the hard part: the compiler refuses code other languages would run. Learn them deeply; every later step depends on them.Start Dedicated page
3 sections, in order
202 lessons192 challenges1,118 questions3 projects
2
Step 2
Linux and the command lineDedicated page
Start this stepStartFiles and paths, wildcards, grep, pipes and redirection, permissions, environment variables and shell scripts. Rust development happens in a terminal: cargo build, cargo test and cargo clippy are commands, compiler errors are read in the console, and Rust has a strong tradition of command-line tools, ripgrep among them. RUST_BACKTRACE and RUST_LOG are likely the first environment variables you will set.Start Dedicated page82 lessons80 challenges440 questions3 projects
3
Step 3
Git and version controlDedicated page
Start this stepStartStaging, commits, .gitignore, branches, merges and conflicts, undoing mistakes and remotes. Every Rust project starts inside Git: cargo new initializes a repository and ignores target/ for you. Crates on crates.io point to their repositories, and contributing to one means branches, commits and a pull request.Start Dedicated page58 lessons55 challenges370 questions2 projects
4
Step 4
SQL fundamentalsDedicated page
Start this stepStartFiltering, sorting, joins, grouping, aggregates, subqueries, WITH clauses and window functions, on real tables. Rust backends reach databases through crates such as sqlx, which can check your queries against a real database at compile time, or Diesel, an ORM; either way, the compiler only helps once the query itself is right.Start Dedicated page72 lessons76 challenges360 questions1 project
5
Step 5
Data structures, built by hand
Start this stepStartStack, queue, linked list, binary tree and hash table, each built from scratch in Rust and then used on problems. A Vec already makes a good stack and a VecDeque a queue, but a linked list is the classic place Rust's rules bite: each node owns the next through Option<Box<Node>>, and the borrow checker asks who may change it. Building these is the fastest way to make ownership concrete.Start
5 courses, in order
66 lessons56 challenges4 projects
6
Step 6
Algorithms and recursive thinking
Start this stepStartRecursion challenges, then bubble, selection, insertion, merge and quick sort in Rust, the sorts animated in Coddy's algorithm visualizer. Sorting in place is borrowing practice: quick sort partitions a &mut [T], and splitting one slice into two for recursion is what split_at_mut exists for. Afterwards the standard library's pair makes sense: sort is stable, while sort_unstable is not, and usually faster.Start
6 courses, in order
62 lessons41 challenges158 questions4 projects
7
Step 7
Code other people can read
Start this stepStartAn object-oriented project built end to end and a bank of coding problems, both in Rust. rustfmt and clippy handle formatting and many lints; names, function size and module boundaries are left to you, and they are what Rust reviewers comment on.Start
2 courses, in order
1. User Class - OOP Project8 lessons8 challenges1 project
2. Coding Problems32 lessons31 challenges
40 lessons39 challenges1 project

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1const greeting = "Hello, Coddy!"

2function sayHi(name) {

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Read, listen, test yourself, ask the AI, or look up anything you've already covered. Every lesson meets you where you are.

Intro to Variables

Audio

A variable is a named container that stores a value you can reference later in your program.

In Python, you create one by writing the name, an equals sign, then the value you want to store.

The value can change over time. Reassigning the name simply points it to a new value.

1xSarah

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Python Fundamentals

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Why follow this Rust roadmap on Coddy

Rust is chosen where speed and safety both matter. Systems software, networking and infrastructure, command-line tools, embedded devices, WebAssembly and security-sensitive code are where Rust jobs are, because it performs like C and C++ while its compiler rules out whole classes of memory bugs.
An honest first month. Ownership and borrowing make Rust slower to start than most languages, so the course takes them in small steps, through references, slices, String against &str and Clone against Copy, alongside Option, Result, structs, enums and traits, until the compiler's refusals read as reasons.
Data structures under the borrow checker. A linked list or a binary tree is where ownership stops being theory, and this roadmap has you build the stack, queue, linked list, binary tree and hash table in Rust, then the recursion challenges and the five sorts.
Graded, hinted, nothing to install. Each lesson closes on a Rust challenge that test cases grade; when the compiler or a test says no, Bugsy points toward the fix without writing it. Most courses end with a free certificate, and there is no rustup or Cargo setup: it all runs in the browser.

Frequently asked questions about becoming a Rust developer

How long does it take to become a Rust developer?

If Rust is your first language, nine to fifteen months at about an hour a day is a realistic range to a junior interview, with most of the extra time spent getting fluent with ownership. Developers who already know C++ or another typed language often need a few months. On this roadmap the Rust course is six to eight weeks of lessons, though ownership usually takes longer to feel natural; the command line, Git and SQL about a month together, and the data structures and sorting steps two or three more.

Is Rust a good first language for a software engineer?

It can be, if you are patient and aiming at systems work. Rust makes you think about memory, types and errors from the first week, which is valuable and slow. Many people are better served by Python or Go first and Rust second, and this roadmap exists in both; if Rust is the job you want, starting here is reasonable, because its compiler errors are unusually good teachers.

What does a Rust developer need to know besides Rust?

The command line, Git and SQL, which this roadmap covers, then Cargo and the crates ecosystem, asynchronous Rust with Tokio for network services, and the domain you are aiming at: a web framework such as Axum for backends, embedded hardware, or WebAssembly in the browser. Reading C helps too, because a lot of Rust work sits beside existing C and C++ code.

Should I learn C++ before Rust?

No, though it helps. Rust is designed to be learned directly, and its compiler teaches the memory rules that C++ leaves to discipline. If you know C++, ownership will feel like the rules you already try to follow, made mandatory; if you do not, start with Rust and pick up C++ later when a job asks for it. This roadmap exists in C++ as well.

Which course on this roadmap is not taught in Rust?

One: clean code is taught in Python only so far, so it is listed after the steps rather than in step seven. Its principles apply to Rust as they are, and Rust's tooling takes care of the mechanical part: rustfmt for layout, clippy for common mistakes and unidiomatic code. Every step, the object-oriented project and the coding problems included, is in Rust.

Is this Rust roadmap free?

Yes. Every course on it is free: the lessons, the Rust editor and the Linux terminal in your browser, the test-graded challenges, Bugsy's hints and the certificates. Pro removes the daily energy limit and adds unlimited AI help, and nothing on this roadmap requires it.

Do I get a certificate for the Software Engineer path?

Yes. Finish every step and you get one free certificate for the whole Software Engineer path. It lists each course you finished on the way, and links each course's own certificate, so anyone can check every skill it names. You can add it to your LinkedIn profile. It is a certificate of completion from Coddy, not an accredited qualification.

Other learning paths

The same courses, arranged for a different role. Progress carries over: a course finished on one path counts on every path that includes it.

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