Embedded Rust Education: 2024 Reflections & 2025 Visions

Introduction

Another year comes to an end, as such, this is an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of 2024 and look forward to 2025. It's been over 2.5 years since I embarked on my embedded Rust journey, and it remains as exciting as ever. If you’re interested in how the journey started, refer to the post from last year. This post will be a round-up of everything that happened in 2024 and what to expect in 2025.

I am forever grateful for all the feedback and notes I keep receiving from the embedded & Rust community. It has been the guiding light and fuel for all my efforts. If you have anything to note after reading this post or have any ideas to share, please feel free to reach out on any social account or just email hi@theembeddedrustacean.com

2024 Reflections 🪞

The goal was and remains to address the gaps in the embedded Rust educational ecosystem. A big part of it is to attract first-time embedded curious users who are into Rust. There was, and still is, a lot of ground to cover. In that regard, there were a lot of interesting and significant milestones in 2024, here they are:

• 📖 Simplified Embedded Rust Published: In May 2024, I successfully published Simplified Embedded Rust. Also, although what I had in plan was one book covering ESP devices, I ended up with a series including two editions: a core library edition and a standard library edition. The editions covered both frameworks that the Espressif ecosystem supports for embedded Rust.

• 📚 400+ Copies Sold: Since its launch in May 2024, Simplified Embedded Rust has sold over 400 copies in digital and print formats. The book's reception was beyond my expectations. I was overwhelmed by the messages of support and thanks I received.

• ✍️ 100+ Blog Posts: I started with blog posts in the Rust-embedded educational space, and it was an amazing journey. Rustaceans continuously ping me about how they find the blog posts useful and how they helped them with their own journeys. In 2024, I reached the milestone of 100 blog posts. However, my focus has shifted somewhat since. I will discuss this further below.

• 🛍️ Rebranding: In 2024, an effort was made to consolidate all activities under one brand: The Embedded Rustacean. For those that have been around for a bit, there was the former Apollo Labs brand that the blog was operating under and is no longer used. There are still some github repos that are yet to be consolidated though.

• 🗞️ 35 Newsletter Editions: The Embedded Rustacean newsletter was launched in 2023 as a source for everything embedded Rust. 2023 ended with nine editions. The newsletter continued to operate bi-monthly throughout 2024. In 2024, 26 newsletter editions regularly highlighted news, educational material, and jobs in the embedded and Rust ecosystem. Throughout the year, the ecosystem had many exciting advancements, with several new companies joining the adoption list. From how things look, we can expect a very exciting 2025 for embedded Rust.

• 🤓 3.7k+ Subscribers: The Embedded Rustacean’s growth has been phenomenal. From less than 900 subscribers at the end of 2023, it has now crossed the 3700 subscriber mark! Further, the newsletter has had high engagement rates, exceeding a 40% open rate and a 30% click-through rate. These numbers testify to the usefulness of the material it has been delivering.

• 🏟️ 2 Conferences: In 2024, I had the pleasure to participate in 2 conferences to talk about embedded Rust. In July, I participated in the UA Rust Conference with my talk “Standard vs. Core Library: An Embedded Perspective.“ Additionally, I participated in the Espressif DevCon in September with my talk “Redefining Embedded Learning with ESP & Rust Bridging the Gap Between Complexity.“ While the Espressif talk is currently public on YouTube, the UARust talk has not yet been published publicly.

A Look Forward to 2025 🔮

What I Have in Plan

In 2024, I switched jobs to one that required more of my time. Also, just like before, I am still doing much of this work in my spare time. As a result, to continue offering the best quality material, I will switch to an alternate strategy where I can deliver more efficiently.

• ⬇️ ✍️ ⬆️ 📖 Less Blog Posting, More Book Updating: It has been challenging to find the time to maintain The Embedded Rustacean Blog, the Simplified Embedded Rust book, and The Embedded Rustacean newsletter. Especially as the number of blog posts has been piling up, many have become outdated due to the dynamic ecosystem. This makes the posts quite challenging to maintain individually with each update. Consequently, I’ll be shifting most of my focus toward maintaining Simplified Embedded Rust to stay dated with the ecosystem changes as it is more central and self-contained. Blog posts will be less frequent but probably reserved for supplementing concepts not covered by the book.

• 🏗️ Projects: Some comments I have received regarding Simplified Embedded Rust suggest that it is similar to other embedded Rust educational resources in that it lacks a project (or projects) for practice. I will work on addressing this early in 2025.

• 🌲 Expand Embedded Rust Reach & Continue Growing Newsletter: The growth experienced by The Embedded Rustacean newsletter in 2024 was exceptional. In 2025, I will be investing more effort in growing the newsletter and expanding its reach further to encompass more embedded Rust enthusiasts.

• 🏟️ Conferences: I plan to continue attending Rust conferences as circumstances allow. For now, I plan to attend Rust in Paris in March 2025.

• 📚 Another Book? This is a bit of a long shot, but ever since publishing Simplified Embedded Rust, I’ve had several inquiries about whether I would write a more hardware-oriented book with advanced concepts, essentially expanding the Simplified Embedded Rust series. Additionally, I have been pinged before about expanding into different devices like the Raspberry Pi Pico or the nRFs. While I am still inclined to venture in that direction, it really depends on how much time I can dedicate. Ultimately, my plan is to create a streamlined learning flow, not necessarily in the form of a book.

Acknowledgments 🙏

Finally, I would like to thank everybody who contributed to these accomplishments; without their effort, none of the above would have been possible. In particular:

• All the book reviewers who dedicated the time to proofread Simplified Embedded Rust in their spare time and provide their comments.

• The Espressif DevCon and the UARust Conference organizers, thank you for your time revising and preparing the conference recordings.

Conclusion

The embedded Rust ecosystem is growing spectacularly. Last year, I highlighted a scarcity of embedded Rust educational material, though, at the end of this year, we are in a different place. A lot of new material has emerged, and even existing material has been updated and enhanced. Hopefully, this trend is expected to continue growing. Now that there is a material that addresses folks coming from a non-embedded background, maybe 2025 is the year to shift gears to introduce more intermediate to advanced material. While there are many “pure” Rust topics to tackle, there are also integration topics that might be of increased interest. For example, in 2024, we saw Rust integrated into the Zephyr framework, in addition to other efforts attempting to integrate Rust into existing codebases. 2025 might be the year where we see more effort for resources pouring into that direction.