NEAR Blockchain Smart Contract Development

Dive into the world of Rust programming! This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the Rust language, covering its core features and syntax. You'll gain a solid foundation in this powerful and increasingly popular language.

Getting Started with Rust

• Rust Installation & Basics: Learn how to set up your development environment and grasp fundamental Rust concepts.
• Cargo: Rust's Build System & Package Manager: Master Cargo for building, managing dependencies, and packaging your Rust projects.
• Crates & Packages: Understand how to utilize and create reusable Rust crates and packages.
• Variables, Constants & Mutability: Explore declaring and working with different types of variables and constants in Rust, including understanding mutability.
• Data Types: Learn about scalar (integers, floats, booleans) and compound (arrays, tuples, structs) data types in Rust.
• Functions: Define and call functions to modularize your code.
• Control Flows: Utilize if statements, loops (for, while), and if let for controlling program execution.
• Ownership & Borrowing (Scope): A core concept in Rust for memory safety. Understand ownership, references, and borrowing to prevent common programming errors.
• Structs & Methods: Define and initialize structs (data structures) and implement methods to operate on them.
• Enums: Create enums for representing different possible values.
• The "match" Control Flow: Use the powerful match statement for pattern matching.
• Modules: Organize your code into reusable modules.
• Vectors & HashMaps: Work with dynamic arrays (Vectors) and key-value stores (HashMaps).
• Error Handling: Learn about both recoverable and unrecoverable errors in Rust.
• Traits: Define traits to specify shared behavior across different types (similar to interfaces in other languages).
• Command Line Arguments: Read and process command line arguments.
• File I/O: Read from and write to files.
• Standard Error Output: Use eprintln! for printing to standard error.
• Iterators: Understand the Iterator trait and the next method for efficient data processing.
• Heap Allocation: Use Box to allocate data on the heap.
• Multithreading: Run code in threads simultaneously.
• Message Passing: Implement communication between threads using message passing.
• Mutexes: Protect shared data using Mutexes to ensure thread safety.

NEAR Smart Contract Development with Rust

This section applies your Rust knowledge to develop smart contracts on the NEAR blockchain.

• Testnet Accounts: Create Testnet accounts on the NEAR blockchain using a web wallet.
• Compilation & Deployment: Compile and deploy NEAR smart contracts using the Gitpod environment.
• Command Line Interaction: Interact with deployed NEAR smart contracts using command line tools.
• Hands-on Project: Get practical experience by compiling and deploying a sample counter smart contract on your own account – in under 20 minutes!

Further Learning: This course provides a gentle introduction to Rust. For more in-depth coverage and advanced features, refer to "The Book" on the Rust programming language.