Data WithRust: Update #1

I'd like to start by thanking you 🤗 for subscribing to my little side project: teaching how and why to use Rust for Data Engineering through examples and little steps.

I'm completely overwhelmed by the amount of emails, feedback and comments I have received per Email, Twitter or LinkedIn. It is absolutely incredible how much interest there is in exploring Rust for Data Engineering. When I started this I thought it will get a little bit of interest but what started as a simple website with a few of my notes turned into:

• +600 email subscribers
• +2000 LinkedIn connections & follows
• +40 emails of people reaching out per email
• +500,000 visits on the website from the LinkedIn launch announcement

I never thought something so niche as Rust and Data Engineering would get this much attention, which makes me a little bit anxious but tremendously excited thinking about what's ahead.

There is currently a lot of discussions and topics around AI, specifically about LLM (Large Language Models) and although Machine Learning is one side of the equation, the most significant variable in that equation is the data. Which makes it even more important to handle the ever growing amount of data properly and efficiently. This is to say that, the evolution and speed of development of AI tools and systems is tied to how well data can be made accessible for computation: data engineering.

While this might be an over simplification, it still stands that without good or enough data, there can't be significant advancements in AI - at least with today's approaches.

Now all this to say, that I'm very honoured and grateful you have decided to subscribe to https://datawithrust.com and I will do my best to get you up and running with Rust very quickly.

I promised bi-weekly updates so here we are, what does Karim have for you this week? (Changelog for reference)

✅ Chapter 1: done

I've added a few sections in the first chapters, which were either requested per email or on LinkedIn. Overall, I'm confident that Chapter 1 will give enough material to make the case for Rust and why it can be useful, especially compared to other programming languages.

🚧 Chapter 2: in progress

I've finalised the sections for chapter 2. The goal of this chapter is to help you set up Rust on your local machine. The first 3 sections: Setting up a Rust developer environment, configuring an IDE and creating your first programs using the Rust compiler are live.

The rest of the sections should be available rather soon. I've made them visible, if you'd like a specific one added, let me know and I'll take care of that.

👀 Website: Members area

I'm planning of making a specific area of the website available to all the subscribers, for free. That's a surprise that I'll share once ready. But not yet :P

Conclusion

This first update is a short one, since I've considerably reviewed the scope of the project and am determined to do the best job possible. As always, if there are any questions, let me know, I'm happy to help 🤗

Bonus

Here's a question that I received per email, that I thought I'd get your input on: Would some short videos of the code running, the setup or any other part of the content help you out?

If there's enough interest, I'll invest the time and make those available for free as well. If there's any other feedback, let me know. I read and answer to every single email.

My assistant and I wish you a lovely Sunday!