The browser you're reading this in started life as text files. So did the firmware in a car, the server behind your group chat, and most of the tools professional Rust programmers use every day. Someone typed instructions, a compiler checked every line and translated them, and out came a program. This course teaches you to write that text in Rust, a language whose compiler is famous for catching mistakes before a program ever runs.
You don't need any programming experience. This chapter covers the three things every later chapter takes for granted.
The first section explains what a program is: the readable text you write (source code), the translator that checks and converts it (the compiler), and the file of machine code that comes out (the executable). You'll read a four-line Rust program, see how compiling differs from interpreting, and meet the compiler's most useful habit: refusing to build a program that breaks a rule, and telling you exactly where.
The second section gets you comfortable with files and folders and with the window where you type commands instead of clicking. You'll make the folder your first Rust file goes into, and learn to tell from a command's reply whether it worked. Pick your operating system once and every set of steps follows your choice.
The third section explains how the course itself works: the two ways each idea is explained, the kinds of exercises, and the line between what a lesson page checks and what only your own computer runs. It also explains why every output and error message shown on a page is real.
By the end you'll have a folder waiting for hello.rs, and a clear
picture of the trip that file will take.