Rust

This is a collection of stories about rust, and in particular the people who deal with it. Each chapter focuses on a different group of people, making it a collection of short stories. Following the people helps lift what could otherwise be a very dry topic; there a good mix of technical information and lighter anecdotes.

Particular favourite chapters include:

• Coating the Can (about creating canned drinks which are safe for customers)
• Pigging the Pipe (monitoring the state of corrosion in long oil pipelines)
• Indiana Jane (photographing rusting buildings)

I took a lot of notes.

I was struck by the parallels to software engineering – in particular the difficulty corrosion engineers have in getting others to care about their work, and how many people want to chase the new shiny rather than maintain the existing thing.

I originally discovered this while looking for alternate readings of “the Rust Book”, which is usually used by programmers to refer to a book about the programming language. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

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