Learning JS vs Learning Rust

This article is a work in progress

This is an article about my own personal experiences learning Javascript vs learning Rust. I come from a computer programming background, but JS was the first language I was fluent in.

The Learning Curve

Javascript

When learning JS, I came from a HTML and CSS background primarily. I had worked a little with PHP, but not enough to truly understand it.

JS was a hard concept for me. It was the first language I did that truly had “interactivity” with the user, beyond CSS pseudo-elements.

With JS, I’d say as soon as I understood how javascript executed, and truly understand the DOM (at least in a basic sense), my javascript really started to shine.

Node is an entirely different story. Personally, I’d recommend learning client side JS, then going to a server side language that’s not Node (PHP, Python, Ruby even), and then coming back to Node. Node is a power house, but it’s missing some key features. I firmly believe that people that jump right to Node without knowing another backend get stuck there.

Rust

Rust is really hard if you’re not determined, patient, and disciplined. There’s tons of books, and the Rust documentation has to be the best documentation ever written. If you can manage to stick to reading all the docs, reading some books, and continuing to practice, the language gets significantly easier.

It’s just that clicking point feels much farther out with Rust. I definitely don’t think it’s a beginner friendly language, but, if you can manage to learn Rust, you can do a lot. So, I recommend trying it out. Just don’t let it defeat you.

*I’m still learning Rust myself, and don’t feel fluent in it enough to elaborate further than this