Ask HN: Best resources to start with systems programming?

I am a web developer that recently got interested into systems programming through the Rust programming language.

The language seems like a challenge and suits my decision to expand my technical knowledge by tackling a different environment and paradigm.

However, even though I can learn the language, I find it difficult to think of some simple systems programming projecst to practice. In addition to that, whenever I check any Rust-lang repos (i.e. Servo) to potentially contribute there are many alien concepts to me and technical terminology related to low-level programming, making me feel like a beginner.

And so I wonder, are there any books or resources to get used to systems programming (APIs definition, architecture, best practices, tutorials...) to have a better context and knowledge?

Surely there will be aspects common to web development and any kind of programming. However, systems programming seems quite like a different world to me.

2 comments

[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 17.4 ms ] thread

k0t0n0 7y ago ↗

There was a recent tweet from a game developer how to go about learning rust. i have been struggling with rust too. i guess to start anything interesting in rust on should have some what good understanding of lifetime, ownership and how to properly handle data.

from what i have learned. one cannot brute force into rust. 5 months ago i started a project using rust. i thought i will just go over few things it's gonna be fine. turns out i ended up hurting my brain. take your time to learn rust star small.

Link to the tweet: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust_gamedev/comments/9hikxm/really...

__exit__ 7y ago ↗

Thank you for the response!

I am currently reading the "Programming Rust" book. My problem is not on the concepts themselves but on applying them: I am finding it quite hard to think of some small project to apply the learning. In addition to this, my thinking is that systems programming requires a different approach to coding/architecture of applications (because it lies closer to the OS layer than other kinds of apps such as web apps).