NEAR + Rust, the friendly way

We couldn't find a good intro to both NEAR and Rust.

The Rust Book provides a wonderful intro to Rust, the most-loved programming language seven years running.

And some guides, cookbooks, and examples for NEAR with Rust are scattered here and there.

These are useful. These are fine. Especially the Rust Book. We recommend you read it later.

But none are what we wanted:

A quick intro to Rust, providing just enough depth to get you started on your Smart Contract journey;
Examples you can "touch and feel" in the RAEN Admin panel, so you get a quick feedback loop between modifying Rust code and actually using the resulting smart contract;
Progressively more complex examples, so you can see the basics clearly and then build on those patterns.

That is, something like RAEN itself, built to help developers launch NEAR apps faster than they thought possible.

So this is less a "guide to RAEN" and more a "guide to NEAR + Rust, the RAEN way."

You'll be ready to get building faster than you think.

This guide assumes you have experience with the command line and at least one programming language. That's it.

"RAEN" is "NEAR" spelled backwards. It is pronounced the same as "rain".

Prefer video?

Ok, if you're still here, you're ready to install some dependencies and look at some examples! Click to the next chapter.