% Hello, world!

Now that you have Rust installed, let’s write your first Rust program. It’s
traditional to make your first program in any new language one that prints the
text “Hello, world!” to the screen. The nice thing about starting with such a
simple program is that you can verify that your compiler isn’t just installed,
but also working properly. And printing information to the screen is a pretty
common thing to do.

The first thing that we need to do is make a file to put our code in. I like
to make a `projects` directory in my home directory, and keep all my projects
there. Rust does not care where your code lives.

This actually leads to one other concern we should address: this guide will
assume that you have basic familiarity with the command line. Rust itself makes
no specific demands on your editing tooling, or where your code lives. If you
prefer an IDE to the command line, you may want to check out
[SolidOak][solidoak], or wherever plugins are for your favorite IDE. There are
a number of extensions of varying quality in development by the community. The
Rust team also ships [plugins for various editors][plugins]. Configuring your
editor or IDE is out of the scope of this tutorial, so check the documentation
for your setup, specifically.

[solidoak]: https://github.com/oakes/SolidOak
[plugins]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/src/etc/CONFIGS.md

With that said, let’s make a directory in our projects directory.

```bash
$ mkdir ~/projects
$ cd ~/projects
$ mkdir hello_world
$ cd hello_world
```

If you’re on Windows and not using PowerShell, the `~` may not work. Consult
the documentation for your shell for more details.

Let’s make a new source file next. We’ll call our file `main.rs`. Rust files
always end in a `.rs` extension. If you’re using more than one word in your
filename, use an underscore: `hello_world.rs` rather than `helloworld.rs`.

Now that you’ve got your file open, type this in:

```rust
fn main() {
    println!("Hello, world!");
}
```

Save the file, and then type this into your terminal window:

```bash
$ rustc main.rs
$ ./main # or main.exe on Windows
Hello, world!
```

Success! Let’s go over what just happened in detail.

```rust
fn main() {

}
```

These lines define a *function* in Rust. The `main` function is special:
it's the beginning of every Rust program. The first line says "I’m declaring a
function named `main` which takes no arguments and returns nothing." If there
were arguments, they would go inside the parentheses (`(` and `)`), and because
we aren’t returning anything from this function, we can omit the return type
entirely. We’ll get to it later.

You’ll also note that the function is wrapped in curly braces (`{` and `}`).
Rust requires these around all function bodies. It is also considered good
style to put the opening curly brace on the same line as the function
declaration, with one space in between.

Next up is this line:

```rust
    println!("Hello, world!");
```

This line does all of the work in our little program. There are a number of
details that are important here. The first is that it’s indented with four
spaces, not tabs. Please configure your editor of choice to insert four spaces
with the tab key. We provide some [sample configurations for various
editors][configs].

[configs]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/etc/CONFIGS.md

The second point is the `println!()` part. This is calling a Rust [macro][macro],
which is how metaprogramming is done in Rust. If it were a function instead, it
would look like this: `println()`. For our purposes, we don’t need to worry
about this difference. Just know that sometimes, you’ll see a `!`, and that
means that you’re calling a macro instead of a normal function. Rust implements
`println!` as a macro rather than a function for good reasons, but that's an
advanced topic. One last thing to mention: Rust’s macros are significantly
different from C macros, if you’ve used those. Don’t be scared of using macros.
We’ll get to the details eventually, you’ll just have to trust us for now.

[macro]: macros.html

Next, `"Hello, world!"` is a ‘string’. Strings are a surprisingly complicated
topic in a systems programming language, and this is a ‘statically allocated’
string. If you want to read further about allocation, check out
[the stack and the heap][allocation], but you don’t need to right now if you
don’t want to. We pass this string as an argument to `println!`, which prints the
string to the screen. Easy enough!

[allocation]: the-stack-and-the-heap.html

Finally, the line ends with a semicolon (`;`). Rust is an ‘expression oriented’
language, which means that most things are expressions, rather than statements.
The `;` is used to indicate that this expression is over, and the next one is
ready to begin. Most lines of Rust code end with a `;`.

Finally, actually compiling and running our program. We can compile with our
compiler, `rustc`, by passing it the name of our source file:

```bash
$ rustc main.rs
```

This is similar to `gcc` or `clang`, if you come from a C or C++ background. Rust
will output a binary executable. You can see it with `ls`:

```bash
$ ls
main  main.rs
```

Or on Windows:

```bash
$ dir
main.exe  main.rs
```

There are now two files: our source code, with the `.rs` extension, and the
executable (`main.exe` on Windows, `main` everywhere else)

```bash
$ ./main  # or main.exe on Windows
```

This prints out our `Hello, world!` text to our terminal.

If you come from a dynamically typed language like Ruby, Python, or JavaScript,
you may not be used to these two steps being separate. Rust is an
‘ahead-of-time compiled language’, which means that you can compile a program,
give it to someone else, and they don't need to have Rust installed. If you
give someone a `.rb` or `.py` or `.js` file, they need to have a
Ruby/Python/JavaScript implementation installed, but you just need one command
to both compile and run your program. Everything is a tradeoff in language
design, and Rust has made its choice.

Congratulations! You have officially written a Rust program. That makes you a
Rust programmer! Welcome. 🎊🎉👍

Next, I'd like to introduce you to another tool, Cargo, which is used to write
real-world Rust programs. Just using `rustc` is nice for simple things, but as
your project grows, you'll want something to help you manage all of the options
that it has, and to make it easy to share your code with other people and
projects.
