Hey there,

You already run Rust every day: ruff, uv, Pydantic v2, Polars, orjson are all Rust under the hood.

Here are five reasons I think this is the year to actually learn it, not just depend on it.

1. AI writes the Rust. Judgment is the moat.

Claude or any LLM will happily generate Rust for you.

The developers who win are the ones who can read and review it, who spot incorrect ownership, unnecessary cloning, or errors that get swallowed.

That review muscle is quietly becoming the valuable skill, and writing Rust yourself is the fastest way to build it.

No real gain without deliberate practice.

2. It makes you a better Python developer.

Rust forces the habits Python lets you skip: explicit errors, no nulls, clear ownership of who mutates what.

Once you've lived in it, you read Python differently. You'll see where "it works" might be hiding a mess.

3. You'll understand the tools you already rely on better.

PyO3 is the bridge between Python and Rust. Learn it, and you'll understand how libraries like Pydantic and Polars expose fast Rust code through familiar Python APIs.

4. Rust is so good it can no longer be ignored.

By late 2025, Rust had moved from an experiment in the Linux kernel to an established kernel development language.

Nearly half of surveyed organizations now report using Rust in production.

And Rust has continued climbing the TIOBE rankings, reaching the top 10 in 2026. 🦀

This isn't a bet anymore, it's increasingly becoming part of the industry's systems and infrastructure stack. 😍

5. It's among the best-designed languages.

The borrow checker, trait system, and zero-cost abstractions are lessons in programming language design.

Rust makes you think differently about ownership, composition, and performance.

These are lessons that carry over to whatever language you use next.

Here's how Jim Hodapp and I teach it: you build a real JSON parser from scratch, wire it into Python with PyO3, and benchmark it against CPython and serde_json.

Weekly calls to dive deep into blockers and share your learnings with fellow students.

The compiler shows it works. A detailed code review bridges the gaps to make your code more idiomatic.

Learning Rust syntax is one thing; understanding the idiomatic patterns that make Rust code safe, flexible, and maintainable is another.

A private Slack channel to get unblocked and share interesting learnings along the way. The cohort + community aspect is what makes this especially valuable.

And it works: students who have gone through the cohort have shipped faster-than-Python code. And some went beyond the curriculum optimizing their parser further.

Josh, for example, ended up with a parser that beats CPython's standard-library json on every fixture (2.96× on a float-heavy file), built from scratch in six weeks.

The next cohort starts Monday, September 14, and is capped at 6 developers.

If any of those five reasons landed with you, the best next step is to set up a quick call with me (and Jim if you pick a US workday time) and we'll talk through what you want out of Rust and whether this is the right fit for you right now.

Of course, no pressure to decide on the spot, we only take on people for whom this is a good fit.

→ Book a 30-min call

Here's what some of the students say after completing the program:

Building something real made Rust click in a way that tutorials never could — and honestly, it's made me a better Python developer too. My Rust implementation is only 0.8x slower than CPython's C and 10–12x faster than simplejson. — Vikas

This 6-weeks Rust cohort was awesome! Jim is an amazing and thoughtful teacher and mentor. He's great at helping me develop a mindset of mastering Rust. With Jim's friendly guidance, I successfully built a real world project to get experience about Rust's mental model, syntax and its ecosystem. The weekly code review was really insightful and helpful, Jim provided invaluable feedback on my code. Over several iterations he guided me to improve my code to succinct, clear, idiomatic Rust code. Cannot say enough good things about this Rust cohort! — Ben L.

This has been hands down one of the best instructor-led courses I have done. Everything from the curriculum structuring to the methodology pushes you to learn and build smoothly from day one. The knowledge I generated set me up to continue learning more complex concepts of the language on my own and gave me a solid TDD ground for Rust projects. — Victor S.

Not ready yet?

→ Program info

Have a great week.

Bob