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I'm a CS grad, I want to move away from Front End and get a Rust job. What is the most efficient way to do so?

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Hi all,

As the question states, currently I'm a London-based front end web dev working with JS/TS frameworks like Next.js, React and Vue. While I've only finished uni last year, I already have a few years worth of experience in front end. Still I really want to move away from that to Rust.

I simply loved the work I did in other programming languages much more than the front end work I'm currently doing. I will provide some perspective of what I enjoyed the most from my work/uni experience, since maybe that will help you with providing me some advice for what to learn and what kind of jobs to go for. Feel free to skip to the actual question towards the end :)

My favourite courses at uni were

  • Compilers where we wrote parts of a compiler in OCaml and probably received my highest exam grade at uni
  • Principles of Programming Languages where we wrote language interpreter in Haskell)
  • Database Systems Implementation where we wrote parts of a database management system in C++ and I wrote whole basic management system in JS with Node.js (very bad choice performance wise, it was hilariously slow and memory inefficient compared to the C++ one)
  • Computer Graphics, where we worked with Three.js to render different things

My work experience highlight was an internship where I ended up writing a neural network library from scratch in C++ to optimise matrix operations on a Raspberry Pi using vectorized operations (Neon Intrinsics) for the ARM CPU.

If you wonder why I ended up in front end given that none of my favourite experiences have sth in common with that, it's because I've been lucky and privileged enough to have a dev from a local software company find me and offer me a mentorship when I was in high school at the department he was working for, the JavaScript front-end one. This was in the old JQuery and Angular days, when React was fresh and new and exciting. Since then, I've gathered more and more JS and front end experience, reinforcing a vicious cycle of me getting more opportunities in this area and therefore me gaining more experience and so on. Most of the LinkedIn offers I get are for React positions now, and I really want to make a career switch.

If you ask why I want Rust from all possible alternatives, it's the community, the amazing compiler, the fact that so many devs praise it as their most beloved languages in the yearly surveys and because I like the fresh approach Rust has with its borrowing mechanism, it provides me a problem solving challenge and forces me to approach things from a slightly different perspective.

So here's the actual question. I only have a few hours per evening after work free and maybe part of the weekend. What would the best use of my time be to get a Rust job fast (I'm very depressed due to my current work and I need to get away ASAP for my mental health) and what kind of Rust job should I go for?

Thanks very much in advance for your feedback.