Rust for Backend Engineers

Why Rust on the Backend

A pragmatic look at what Rust actually buys you on the server — and what it costs.

Ownership Without the Meme

Moves, borrows, and lifetimes explained through the code patterns you'll actually write in a backend service.

Async and Tokio

How Rust's async runtime works, what .await actually does, and the traps that catch engineers coming from Node or Go.

Error Handling at Scale

How to build a coherent error strategy in Rust using Result, thiserror, anyhow, and structured domain errors.

Web Frameworks Compared

Axum, Actix-web, and Rocket side by side — what each one is optimized for and how to choose.

Database Access

sqlx, SeaORM, and Diesel compared — compile-time query checking, ORM tradeoffs, and how to pick for your service.

Build Times: The Truth

What actually drives Rust compile times and the tactics — incremental builds, sccache, workspace splits — that make them liveable.

FFI and Embedding

How to call Rust from Python, Node, and Go — and how to call C from Rust — with a realistic view of what the boundary costs you.

Operating Rust Services

Observability, panic handling, health checks, and deployment patterns for Rust backend services in production.