The Soul of a New Machine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that tells the story of a team of engineers at Data General who were tasked with designing a new 32-bit minicomputer, the Eclipse MV/8000, to compete with Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX computer. The book, written by Tracy Kidder, provides a detailed and compelling account of the engineers' year-long effort, highlighting the intense work ethic, technological innovations, and personal sacrifices involved in the project. It explores the culture of the high-tech industry, the grassroots approach to innovation, and the tension between engineering quality and time to market. The book is praised for its narrative art and its insight into the human side of technological development.
This book is the official guide to Rust, an open-source systems programming language. It covers everything from the basics of creating functions, choosing data types, and binding variables to advanced concepts such as ownership, borrowing, lifetimes, error handling, and fearless concurrency. The book includes concept chapters and project chapters, where readers apply what they have learned by building small programs, including a number-guessing game, a Rust implementation of a command line tool, and a multithreaded server. It emphasizes Rust’s ability to provide low-level control without the traditional risks of crashes or security holes, making it suitable for a wide range of programming tasks, from CLI apps to web servers.
What's even cooler than writing your own
text editor or your own
operating system? Building your own hardware from scratch with all the software written in Rust -- including firmware, the scheduler, and the hypervisor. Oxide Computer Company is one of the most admired companies in the Rust community. They are building "servers as they should be" with a focus on security and performance to serve the needs of modern on-premise data centers.
In this episode, I talk to Steve Klabnik, a software engineer at Oxide and renowned Rustacean, about the advantages of building hardware and software in tandem, the benefits of using Rust for systems programming, and the state of the Rust ecosystem.
About Oxide Computer Company
Founded by industry giants Bryan Cantrill, Jessie Frazelle, and Steve Tuck, Oxide Computer Company is a beloved name in the Rust community. They took on the daunting task of rethinking how servers are built -- starting all the way from the hardware and boot process (and no, there is no BIOS). Their 'On The Metal' podcast is a treasure trove of systems programming stories and proudly served as a role model for 'Rust in Production.'
About Steve Klabnik
In the Rust community, Steve does not need any introduction. He is a prolific writer, speaker, and software engineer who has contributed to the Rust ecosystem in many ways -- including writing the first version of the official Rust book. If you sent a tweet about Rust in the early days, chances are Steve was the one who replied. Previously, he worked at Mozilla and was a member of the Rust and Ruby core teams.
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Links From The Episode (In Chronological Order)
Official Links
Rust in Production 
