Before we dive into Rust's powerful ownership and borrowing system, let's set up your environment so you can follow along and run examples confidently.

Prerequisites

Basic command line knowledge (terminal, navigation)
A working system: Linux, macOS, or Windows
Internet connection to install Rust and tools

Installing Rust

Rust has a great official installer called rustup. It installs Rust, cargo (the package manager), and sets up the development environment.

On Linux/macOS:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

On Windows:

Download and run the Rust installer.
Follow the steps in the UI.

Verify Installation

After installation, restart your terminal and run:

rustc --version
cargo --version

You should see version numbers like rustc 1.x.x and cargo 1.x.x.

Create Your First Rust Project

cargo new hello-rust
cd hello-rust
cargo run

You should see:

Hello, world!

If that worked — you’re all set! 🎉

What’s Next?

Now that Rust is ready to go, we'll move on to Chapter 1: Ownership, where the real fun begins!

Installation & Prerequisites