I’m a long-time data analyst with some data engineering experience. My overall stack time is about:

• SQL – 10 years
• Tableau Desktop – 10 years
• GitHub – 2 years
• Python – 2 years
• ETL Tools – 3 years

A few years ago, I embarked on a mission to be full stack. I picked up Python and learned how to do ETL operations on my own. I’ve heard great things about the speed and efficiency benefits of Rust over Python, so I wanted to put it to the test.

The basic question I have is: what is the absolute furthest that I can take Rust in the direction of data science (to include AI applications) and data engineering? The library environment for data science is extremely robust for Python and I know it’s substantially smaller for Rust, but I’m still interested in taking it as far as I can. Over the next few months, I’m going to be upskilling in Rust and seeing where Rust for DS goes.

I’m very aware of structural differences of Rust compared to Python. Memory management and static typing are elements that I’ve never had to care about, but it’s going to need to be a consideration moving forward. Ultimately, I think giving Rust a try will make me a more consciencious developer in that there are a lot of things I just took for granted with Python and SQL.

I know absolutely no Rust right now, so I’m leaning on Duke University’s Rust Fundamentals course through Coursera to get me up to speed on the basics.

Week 1 Results

The first week of the course revolved around setting up the VS Code environment for Rust, deploying GitHub Copilot, setting up the dev container, and dockerizing it.

I’m very familiar with VS Code for local development, but actually using Docker and working in a containerized environment is new. I’ve been wanting to containerize my org’s Python development environment for at least a year (it’s further down the to-do list), so spending some time on this is gonna pay off later on.

No actual Rust development work yet. Looking ahead, it appears that week 2 of the course jumps right into for and while loops. Ech, not a favorite topic of mine, but essential nonetheless.

Anyone else using Rust for data operations?