Rust in Action by Tim McNamara
Book Review

2022-02-17

I'm not affiliated with the author and he did not approve this review.

TL;DR;

Cumbersome explanations
Tedious to find information
Book order makes no sense
Layout is difficult to read and extremely cluttered
Author loses focus and drifts off on tangents all the time
It put me off Rust for a while
Get Hands-on Rust or Zero to Production instead, those are great books!

I wish I had not bought this book

I made the unfortunate mistake of buying into the promise of the Rust in Action book and, to be honest, it actually put me off Rust for a while. The author tries to cater for too many audiences, jumping between topics rapidly and never really getting around to explaining anything properly.

I walked away from the book confused and under the impression that Rust just sucks. It's such a pity, as I've always had great results buying Manning books. Not this time though.

All over the place

The explanations in Rust in Action are extremely cumbersome and just falls flat all over the place. At times, it's assumed you know nothing about Rust and just a second later it introduces lifetimes, before you've actually had a need for them.

The author constantly loses focus and drifts off on some tangent. It feels like the book alternates between being a book, a reference guide and a short-story collection.

Update in 2023

Wow, this book really hasn't aged well. I took a stab at it again, because, well, I paid a lot of money for it and thought perhaps it'll go better now that I've done a fair bit of Rust in production.

In fact, now instead of just disliking the book, I actively avoid it. The way the author goes about introduction concepts are so tedious, I end up doubting my understanding of a topic. It's definitely not gotten better with age.