HN Explorer

Ask HN: How to learn about network programming (in Rust)?

2 points by jessym ↗ HN
Hello HN!

I would like to learn a bit more about network programming, because I have this idea of building a reverse proxy in Rust.

- I can read and write some basic Rust, but I'm struggling hard with all things related to networking (the mio library, command line tools such as nc, what really is a socket or tcp?)

- Are there any Rust-specific networking resources you can recommend for beginners?

- If not, any general networking resources? Preferably something accessible to somebody who doesn't know C.

- For what it's worth, I have about 8 years of experience with (modern) Java for web development.

Really looking forward to your thoughts and ideas, as I'm feeling a bit lost.

Thank you!

9 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 34.2 ms ] thread
arthurcolle
Is there something about the std::net documentation that you find difficult to grok? https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/net/

Other than that, I wrote this blog post about some useful specific Rust resources: https://world.hey.com/arthurcolle/some-useful-rust-resources...

Not a Rust expert, just someone that wrote a useful crate or two.

jessym
Thanks!

I'm definitely going to have a look at some of the resources from your blog post.

With regards to the standard documentation: I notice that I'm able to read the sentences, but I'm finding it a bit difficult to really turn it into a working project I actually understand.

(For instance: the docs give an example of how bind to a socket address, but I'm not sure how to morph this into a simple echo server, for example, which writes back whatever I sent to it. Feels a bit like I might be missing some general information about TCP and how to test it, how it relates to HTTP, etc.)

arthurcolle
Totally not an OpenAI shill or anything, but based on your question and this specific type of QA stuff, here's my advice: spend the 20 bucks on ChatGPT Plus to get GPT-4 access - it is an invaluable learning tool for questions such as these.

For example, with your specific question: https://chat.openai.com/share/0d922193-b9b6-4d51-85e8-d31c05...

Zero-shot correct solution to the example query. Based on your question, you could even just say "Can you explain X based on Y info that I found in the docs without writing a solution" if you truly just want to learn about the topic. Then with some iterative refinement of the results over a few back and forths, you can learn about the concept without necessarily having it write the code for you. Cheers!

jessym
This is pretty good!

I've been trying to have the free GPT-3.5 explain me things, but the results were a bit mixed (I caught it making a few things up earlier). But I might give GPT-4 a try, thanks!

arthurcolle
GPT-4 is significantly better than GPT-3.5-turbo. Do not use GPT-3.5-turbo outputs as your benchmark for the utility of the more advanced models! :) Especially when used for LLM Agents, or any kind of harder question.
jessym
Got it, thank you so much!