In 2023, the Rust programming language reached many impressive milestones. From being named the most-loved programming language for another year in a row by StackOverflow to crates.io downloads reaching 45 billion and counting, there is no sign of Rust’s impressive growth slowing.

At the Rust Foundation, we are committed to facilitating the healthy growth of Rust through funding and resources for the community and the Project. After conducting initial planning and research and getting approval from our board of directors, we are pleased to announce our intention to help fulfill this commitment by developing a Rust Foundation training and certification program.

With an ever-growing demand for commercially provided Rust courses, we see a good reason for the Rust Foundation to enter the training market and use program proceeds to benefit the Rust community. ** ** So, although we’re still in the earlier stages of planning and research for this program, we are excited to share this intention with you today.

Why do we believe a Rust Foundation training and certification program would benefit the Rust ecosystem?

The Rust Foundation is aware that there is a great deal of high-quality educational Rust language material available today. Indeed, many community creators have been actively working in this space for some time. We continue to be supportive of anyone creating Rust training and education materials. In fact, we are proud to have provided funding to a few individuals involved in this work via our Community Grants Program.

Our team is also aware that commercial Rust training courses already exist and that global training entities are already developing their own Rust-focused programs. Given the value of Rust in professional open source, this makes sense. However, we are eager to introduce a program that will allow us to direct profits back into the Rust ecosystem.

As a nonprofit organization, we sit in a unique position thanks to the tools, connections, insights, administrative support, and resources at our disposal – all of which will add value to course material aimed at professional development and adoption.

We see our forthcoming program as one tool of many that can be used to verify skills for prospective employers, and for those employers to build out their professional teams of Rust expertise. We will remain supportive of existing training programs offered by Rust Foundation member companies and we’ll look for ways to ensure this remains the case as program development progresses.

Furthermore, we want our future training and certification program to pair with the existing educational tools created by well-qualified Rust community members and companies, allowing students to further develop and demonstrate their abilities and organizations using Rust to indicate their professional competency.

How will the program be developed?

In addition to working closely with our board of directors to plan the next steps and properly allocate resources for this program, we are initially working closely with Tim McNamara – an active member of the Rust community, an experienced Rust educator, and the author of Rust in Action (an introductory guide to Rust). We are currently in the process of identifying other Rust instructors to consult with in the next phase of development. You can connect with Tim on LinkedIn here.

We are also in the early stages of exploring potential partnerships with other existing Rust training providers.

What stage is the Rust Foundation at in this process?

The Rust Foundation held a vote on our team’s proposed development of a self-directed training and certification program primarily aimed at large multinational entities in August 2023. The board voted for us to proceed with this work.

Tim has already been very helpful in advocating for general Rust community perspectives and sharing his thoughts on a high-quality approach to creating educational Rust content. Together, we have begun discussing basic content and structural considerations.

Given the emphasis we will place on supplementing the current Rust training landscape and empowering individual educators, we are also exploring the possibility of offering a Rust Foundation training accreditation system for existing training providers to pursue. Regardless of how this aspect evolves, we intend to remain collaborative with other Rust training providers in our shared ecosystem.

We do not yet have specific details about course/certification pricing as no formal decisions have been reached. However, our intention is for all proceeds from this program to be directed toward Rust Foundation initiatives, community grants, day-to-day operations, and Rust Project support. More pricing details will be shared when we have reached a more advanced stage.

What’s next?

There is no set launch date for the Rust Foundation training and certification program yet, but we plan to continue laying high-quality groundwork in Q4 of 2023 and the first half of 2024. We look forward to working with Tim McNamara and other advisors in the process!

Our members’ perspectives on this program will be very important to us. When we have more details to share, we will provide opportunities for Rust Foundation members to ask questions and provide suggestions. We will continue working with the board to shape our training and certification offerings – as always, minutes of our meetings are available at the bottom of this page.

All Rust community members are welcome to contact the Rust Foundation Project Directors with any questions about the program or ideas for us to consider at this early juncture.

We look forward to sharing more about the development of a Rust Foundation training and certification program in the future!