Scattered Notes

Independent Study Notes

Outcome Ideas:

• Fill a hole in the Rust community
• Put together documentation addressing the question: "Why Rust?"
  • Could be of many different forms--blog, series of REPL activities, memoir-style writing, combination
  • Think about motivations for writing the langauge (or any language)
  • What was Mozilla's motivation for producing Rust? What's the utility to wheel re-invention?
    • Human-interest stories
    • What's the medium?
  • Memoir of my journey to learn Rust (see above remarks for this, too)
  • Crypto-zombies style Rust on-boarding ramp
  • Consider the history of Rust

Assorted Inspirations:

• Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal"
  • The process is the product
• The Beginner's Guide
  • Interactive storytelling
• Crafting Interpreters
  • Format/style

For "Why Rust?":

• Look at existing methods to teach Rust -- how well do they / don't they work?
• Look at anecdotes about trying to learn Rust -- where are the hang-ups?
• Always ask: what's the motivation for adding this writing to the world

Chapter Path:

• Chapter 0: Introduction -- Why Why?
• Chapter 1: Why Start Programming with Rust? (hello world)
• Chapter 2: Why Rust? (code that errors)
• Chapter 3: Why Variables? (basic arithmetic)
• Chapter 4: Why Mutability?
• Chapter 5: Why Constants?
• Chapter 6: Why Data Types?
• Chapter 7: Why Scalar Data Types?

Presentation Path:

• Blueprint chapter "path"
• Image creation/design
• Sidebar navigation
• Embedding audio/visual elements
• REPLs!

Other Interesting Questions:

• Why do you need to learn a programming language at all?
• Why learn this way?
• Why Rust? Why learn a language with Rust?
  • Why Rust's stack traces?
• Why Rust for me?
• ALL chapters ought to have some participatory element?

Components of a Finished Chapter:

• Text (~750 words; 3 minute read)
• Plenty of hyperlinks (as a citation method)
• Illustrations of a consistent, personally created style (think drawings from Crafting Interpreters)
• Navigable chapter sidebar (with some sort of progress bar element?)
• Interactive REPL-based programming activity
  • Might not be appropriate for all chapters; in that case, MUST include audio/video component
• Audio/video components (rather than creating focus on curating)
  • Also might not be appropriate for all chapters; in that case, MUST include an interactive REPL activity *All components that are not text (audio/video/REPL) should take NO MORE than 7 minutes to completely interact with (10 minutes total to complete a chapter)
• "Exploration Pathways": ideas for how to further engage with a chapter's material if the topic is of interest to a learner
• Links that link back into prior posts (keep it circular)
• Popover comment elements?