Chapter 5: Common Programming Concepts

In this chapter, we will explore fundamental programming concepts that are shared across most programming languages, including Rust. These concepts serve as the foundation for software development, regardless of the language you use. We'll begin by examining the role of keywords in structuring and defining the behavior of a program. From there, we'll cover important topics such as data types and variables, which allow us to manage data efficiently. Additionally, we’ll delve into expressions and statements, discuss how Rust handles operators, and explore numeric literals. We'll also examine how Rust handles arithmetic overflow and consider the performance characteristics of numeric types.

These core concepts are essential for writing functional programs, and while their implementation may vary between languages, their purpose remains largely the same. This chapter will help you understand how these fundamentals are applied in Rust and how they compare to other languages like C, establishing a solid foundation for understanding Rust's unique features.

While topics like conditional code execution with if statements, loops, and functions might also be part of this chapter, we will first discuss Rust's memory management through ownership and borrowing before addressing control flow and structuring code with functions and modules in later chapters. This approach makes sense because functions in Rust often involve borrowing or copying data used as arguments, so it’s best to cover them in detail after memory management has been introduced. Additionally, important topics such as the struct data type and dynamic types like vectors and strings will also be discussed in their own dedicated chapters.