Rustlings course adaptation from JetBrains has received a major update
Hi! Yesterday we've updated our Rustlings course adaptation: it's an IntelliJ IDEA (+PyCharm, CLion, Goland) plugin that works via the EduTools plugin, an educational platform for our IDEs. I'd like to explain here, what that is.
We all know brilliant rustlings set of small exercises. We also know great The Rust programming language book. Our adaptation combines both in a unified IDE interface. We have 324 small steps spanning over 13 book chapters (out of 20). Every step is either a theory step or a coding problem to solve.
Theory steps are, in fact, short fragments of The Book, with the essential examples of the fragment made into full code examples that can be played with inside IDE. This allows readers to look at the examples first and then decide whether they are interested in reading the text or not.
Most problem steps are adopted from rustlings, but not all of them. By adoption I mean making them more suitable for automatic checking, hiding nonessential details, and clarifying some descriptions. Some chapters received new problems that are missing from rustlings (for example, there are new exercises on std::cell, Rc, RefCell, modules, etc.). We also have several exercises on mastering IDE features (renaming variables, extracting methods, etc.).
You can go step by step from the very beginning, or simply look into sections you are interested in. You are not forced to solve problems, though that is recommended.
Clearly, this course structure doesn't support all kinds of learners, but if you prefer to learn in small chunks, experiment with the code, and check yourself as early as possible, it may work for you.
You don't need to buy anything to follow the course. It works in IntelllJ IDEA Community edition. All the required plugins (IntelliJ Rust, EduTools, Rustlings) are free of charge.
