Preface: The Challenges of MCU Development and the Value of Rust
The microcontroller domain has been dominated by the C programming language for decades. C's proximity to hardware, concise syntax, and efficient execution naturally made it the preferred choice for embedded development. However, as microcontroller applications become increasingly complex, the demands for code quality and development efficiency continue to rise.
In recent years, Rust has emerged prominently across multiple domains including web backend, system tools, operating systems, and Web3, with embedded development being no exception. Rust was designed from the ground up with system programming requirements in mind, and in resource-constrained environments like microcontrollers, its "zero-cost abstractions" principle becomes particularly important — you can write high-level, safe, and readable code without worrying about runtime overhead. Rust also brings numerous advantages of modern languages: compile-time memory safety checks eliminate most buffer overflow and null pointer dereference risks; the ownership system makes concurrent programming safer and more controllable; rich type systems and trait mechanisms support high-level abstraction and code reuse without introducing runtime overhead; and the package management system makes dependency handling and code reuse straightforward. These features directly address many challenges faced in microcontroller development.
Rust was once criticized for its steep learning curve, but this situation is changing. With increasingly abundant online tutorials and resources, plus the maturation of various development tools, getting started with Rust has become much easier. Particularly for C engineers, the two languages share many commonalities — like C, Rust can directly manipulate hardware registers and memory, maintaining precise low-level control while providing a safer and more modern programming experience. Many memory issues that require careful attention in C can be caught at compile time in Rust, saving significant debugging time. In microcontroller programming, this compile-time checking is especially valuable because debugging on microcontrollers is often much more difficult than on PC applications.
This guide is written for C programmers who want to try Rust for microcontroller development. We'll use practical examples to compare the similarities and differences between the two languages, explain how to use Rust's features to address various challenges in microcontroller development, how to improve development efficiency, and how to write more reliable embedded programs without sacrificing performance.
Online tutorials about Rust are now very abundant, but most start from scratch or target developers from other backgrounds. As a C microcontroller engineer, I hope to approach this from our perspective, integrating existing excellent resources to help everyone master Rust microcontroller development more quickly. I will reference and cite many excellent tutorials, but the focus will be on how to migrate C language experience and thinking patterns to Rust, helping everyone avoid detours. This text is more like a directory or primer to guide you into Rust microcontroller development.
I strongly recommend completing the reading of the following resources first, as this text will extensively reference these excellent materials: