Re:Learning Rust in 2020
by steveklabnik on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @07:43PM
(#23161509)
Yeah. I think it comes down to style. The new book is almost exactly twice as long as the old one; the old one had less stuff to explain, and also didn't explain it in as much depth. Some people prefer brevity. Some prefer the extra explanation. It's a constant struggle to keep the book from getting even longer.
I think the new book is far, far, far better, but I can understand why some other folks don't agree.
That is, the advice "the best way to learn Rust is to read the book" came from when the book was a different one; it's still repeated (perhaps by people who learned from the old book), but it might no longer be as valid.
Just for fun, I've been re-reading the book (that is: reading the new book), and it's much more tiring than I remember the old book being (but I've learned a new trick or two, things that didn't exist back in the Rust 1.0 days when I first learned through reading the book).