I'm trying to learn Rust from scratch while working full time and attending school, and a structured Codecademy course has been difficult to keep up with. I'm unsure whether I should rely on video tutorials, have an AI assistant create a course, study the official documentation, or start building a project and look things up as I go. What learning approach has worked best for you when picking up a new programming language, framework, or tool?
4 Answers
The biggest factor is practice. Learn one small concept, use it immediately, then repeat that cycle. Tutorials and courses can help you get oriented, but you really learn when you’re building something and have to solve problems without being shown every step. There aren’t many shortcuts.
Start using the tool as soon as possible. I prefer a searchable written guide or book over videos, then I write code and look things up whenever I get stuck. You don’t need to master every feature before starting; real projects naturally reveal what you need to learn. Also, experience transfers between languages, so each new one tends to become easier, although Rust has some genuinely unfamiliar concepts and may take longer.
Prioritize school and avoid taking on more than you can sustain. For Rust, work through the early sections of the official Rust Book, especially the material on ownership, and type out the examples yourself. Then use Rust by Example and the standard library documentation as references while building something small, such as a terminal chess program, calculator, Sudoku solver, or simple command-line utility. Search for the specific concepts you need as they arise, and only return to the book when something is unclear. Once a small project works, expand it with a terminal interface or a web version. Small projects you actually finish are much more valuable than passively consuming endless tutorials. I’d also avoid having an AI write courses or fix every error for you, since struggling through problems is part of learning.
Focus on programming fundamentals first: variables, types, control flow, functions, data structures, and problem-solving. Those ideas transfer between languages, even when the syntax changes. After learning the basics, try small exercises, coding challenges, or rebuild a few projects you already made in another language. A short documentation tutorial can get you started, but rebuilding familiar projects in the new language helps you learn much faster than following a long course from beginning to end.
For Rust specifically, expect it to take time. The compiler makes you be explicit about ownership and memory safety, which is a major reason the language can feel more demanding at first. Practice tools such as Rustlings can make those concepts easier to reinforce.
It’s normal to have only a partial understanding of many tools while knowing a few of them deeply. The goal isn’t to memorize an entire ecosystem before using it; it’s to become comfortable finding the right information when you need it.