Hey Reader,

We’re seeing 3 trends that make Rust a strong contender moving forward:

1. Developers want fast tooling. Hence many Python tools are now being rewritten in Rust.
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2. Developers are tired of runtime errors. Catching errors upfront can be painful at first, but it brings greater joy over time.
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3. LLMs need boundaries. Compiled languages provide strong guardrails for systems that are by nature nondeterministic. AI generated Rust code has fewer bugs.

From Scripter to Rust

Rust is amazing. It’s fast. It’s ergonomic. It has great resources and a welcoming community.

The design is elegant with “zero cost abstractions”, meaning you only pay for what you use and you can effectively write concise and elegant code that has optimal performance right out of the box.

Hence we want to help more Python people and other language scripters learn and use it. We believe it’s a critical language tool missing from your professional toolbox.

That’s why we started Scripter to Rust, as a way to enrich your programmer toolbox with a great compiled language that will make you a better developer.

But Rust ain’t easy

Infamously, yes. It does have a steep learning curve, multiple curves even (we’ll explain why in a future issue).

You have to come to terms with the fact that Rust doesn't have a garbage collector, meaning memory management is on you.

But you aren't stuck manually wrangling pointers either. Instead, Rust’s ownership model automatically cleans up data when it goes out of scope while guaranteeing a single owner at a time.

The nice side effect? It permanently changes how you think about data lifetimes, a mindset shift you’ll bring back to every other language you write.

Learning the basics is not too hard and the Rust book is your best companion for this journey. But people get “hit in the face” when they have to put Rust in practice building something bigger. We’ve opted for building a performant JSON parser as the way to get over this critical hump. We’ll tell you more about this in our next email.

Our approach

With many resources out there, what makes our approach unique is:

• We start with Python coming from concepts you already know and resonate with.
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• We teach by building from the get go, because that’s how you really learn a programming language.
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• We use AI deliberately. Yes, use it to explain things, but produce the code yourself first to really own it (no pun). Especially when learning a new language, you need to keep friction in order to really learn.
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• Jim and Bob come from different backgrounds (scripter vs compiled). Which brings us to …

Who are we?

​Bob Belderbos - Bob Belderbos is a Pythonista, using Python for 14 years, including 10+ years at Sun/Oracle in a production setting and with 150+ engineers he has coached. Once he met Python, he never looked back, but he did start looking sideways when he was introduced to Rust 2 years ago. Intrigued by Ruff linting thousands of files in milliseconds. By Pydantic’s core gaining a 17x speed up in its v2 Rust rewrite. And always in for a good challenge, he self taught Rust and unexpectedly improved his Python skills too (more on this soon …). You can say that he came for the speed but stayed for the fact that Rust lets you write safe and robust code.

​Jim Hodapp is a Rust engineer and engineering coach who cares as much about the people writing the code as the code itself. With 25+ years of programming behind him, deep roots in C/C++, and production code shipped in TypeScript, Elixir, Ruby, Java, VHDL, and Basic, he was a founding engineer of Ubuntu Phone OS at Canonical and technical lead for the complete multimedia backend stack. He’s worked with Rust since 2020 and ships production Rust today, from web-based system backends to embedded Rust on Raspberry Pis. After a decade managing engineers as an engineering manager and head of software engineering, he founded his coaching business, Refactor Group, in 2021 and added custom software development as a consultancy in 2026. As a coach, he grows confident, autonomous developers and builds teams that enjoy the work, bringing patience, curiosity, and a belief that great engineering and great mentorship go hand in hand.

Apart from our technical programming grounding, we’re both developer and career coaches, keen on mindset / soft skills. Oftentimes, the technical problems have straightforward (binary) solutions, but human interaction and communication skills can be much harder. We keep that in mind in all that we do.

What to expect from this newsletter

One Rust concept every other week. Always going from the Python lens so it’s easier to understand and taken from real coaching lessons and production code bases.

We want you to feel the joy of going from not understanding the compiler / fighting the borrow checker, to gaining a deeper understanding. And to ship your first Rust code to GitHub / crates.io / fellow devs, even if it’s small scripts at first.

We all start somewhere and that’s to be expected. We are passionate about helping you succeed with Rust.

What about you?

Now that we’ve introduced Rust as a valuable skill to learn, our approach, and who we are, we’re eager to hear from you.

Have you already started with Rust? What is your goal?

We’d also be interested in hearing what got you into programming?

Tell us here replying (a nice side effect: replying helps make sure these emails don’t get lost in your spam folder).

You can also hit us up directly by joining Rust never Sleeps community.

Best regards,

Bob & Jim