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1744

Understanding Serde

Serde is one of the most popular Rust crates, and deservedly so. If you aren't familiar, Serde describes itself as "a framework for serializing and deserializing Rust data structures efficiently and generically." What is most impressive to me is how robust the Serde data model has proven to be, allowing it to support…

1747

How an Optimizing Compiler Works

Optimizing compilers are a mainstay of modern software: allowing a programmer to write code in a language that makes sense to them, while transforming it into a form that makes sense for the underlying hardware to run efficiently. The optimizing compiler's job is to figure out what your input program does, and create…

1750

Parse, Don’t Validate

Historically, I’ve struggled to find a concise, simple way to explain what it means to practice type-driven design. Too often, when someone asks me “How did you come up with this approach?” I find I can’t give them a satisfying answer. I know it didn’t just come to me in a vision—I have an iterative design process…

1760

How to not rewrite it in Rust

Once you get past the growing pains of the Borrow Checker and realise Rust gives you the power to do things which would be unheard of (or just plain dangerous) in other languages, the temptation to Rewrite it in Rust can be quite strong. However at best, the temptation to RiiR is unproductive (unnecessary duplication…