Programming Languages
Rust Questions A deep-dive collection of Rust interview questions covering the borrow checker, ownership, lifetimes, and systems programming patterns. Designed for high-level technical evaluation.
1. What is Rust? What are its key features? Beginner 2. What are the main advantages of Rust over C/C++? Beginner 3. What is memory safety without garbage collection? Intermediate 4. What is the difference between let and let mut? Beginner 5. What are Rust's primitive data types? Beginner 6. What is type inference in Rust? Beginner 7. What is shadowing in Rust? Intermediate 8. What are constants (const) vs immutable variables? Intermediate 9. What is the difference between String and &str? Intermediate 10. What are scalar and compound types? Beginner 11. What is ownership in Rust? Intermediate 12. What are the three ownership rules? Beginner 13. What is move semantics? Intermediate 14. What happens when a variable goes out of scope? Beginner 15. What is the difference between stack and heap allocation? Intermediate 16. What is borrowing in Rust? Intermediate 17. What are references (& and &mut)? Beginner 18. What is the difference between immutable and mutable references? Intermediate 19. What are the borrowing rules? Advanced 20. Can you have multiple mutable references? Intermediate 21. What is a dangling reference? How does Rust prevent it? Advanced 22. What is lifetime in Rust? Advanced 23. Why do we need lifetime annotations? Advanced 24. What is the 'static lifetime? Intermediate 25. What is lifetime elision? Advanced 26. What are structs in Rust? Beginner 27. What are the different types of structs (classic, tuple, unit)? Intermediate 28. What is the difference between struct and tuple struct? Beginner 29. How do you implement methods on structs? Beginner 30. What is Self vs self? Intermediate 31. What are enums in Rust? Intermediate 32. What is the Option<T> enum? Why is it important? Beginner 33. What is the Result<T, E> enum? Intermediate 34. What is pattern matching with match? Beginner 35. What is the difference between if let and match? Intermediate 36. What are traits in Rust? Intermediate 37. How do you implement a trait for a type? Beginner 38. What is the difference between trait and interface? Advanced 39. What are trait bounds? Intermediate 40. What is the difference between impl Trait and dyn Trait? Advanced 41. What are associated types in traits? Advanced 42. What are default trait implementations? Intermediate 43. What is trait inheritance (supertraits)? Intermediate 44. What are orphan rules? Advanced 45. What are common standard traits (Copy, Clone, Debug, Display)? Beginner 46. How does error handling work in Rust? Intermediate 47. What is unwrap() and expect()? Beginner 48. What is the ? operator? Intermediate 49. What is the difference between panic! and Result? Beginner 50. When should you use panic! vs Result? Intermediate 51. How do you create custom error types? Advanced 52. What is the anyhow and thiserror crate? Advanced 53. What are smart pointers in Rust? Intermediate 54. What is Box<T>? When do you use it? Beginner 55. What is Rc<T> (Reference Counted)? Intermediate 56. What is Arc<T> (Atomic Reference Counted)? Intermediate 57. What is the difference between Rc and Arc? Intermediate 58. What is RefCell<T>? Advanced 59. What is interior mutability? Advanced 60. What is Mutex<T> and RwLock<T>? Advanced 61. What are generics in Rust? Beginner 62. How do you define generic functions? Intermediate 63. How do you define generic structs? Intermediate 64. What are generic type constraints? Advanced 65. What is monomorphization? Advanced 66. What is a module in Rust? Beginner 67. What is a crate? Beginner 68. What is the difference between binary and library crates? Intermediate 69. What is Cargo.toml? Beginner 70. What is the difference between use and mod? Intermediate 71. What are pub and visibility rules? Intermediate 72. What is pub(crate) and pub(super)? Advanced 73. How does Rust handle concurrency? Intermediate 74. What are threads in Rust? Beginner 75. What is std::thread::spawn()? Intermediate 76. What is message passing with channels (mpsc)? Intermediate 77. What is the difference between send() and try_send()? Advanced 78. What is shared state concurrency? Advanced 79. What is Mutex<T> for thread safety? Intermediate 80. What is Arc<Mutex<T>> pattern? Advanced 81. What are Send and Sync traits? Advanced 82. What is the difference between Send and Sync? Advanced 83. What is a data race? How does Rust prevent it? Advanced 84. What are closures in Rust? Intermediate 85. What are the closure traits (Fn, FnMut, FnOnce)? Advanced 86. What is the difference between Fn, FnMut, and FnOnce? Advanced 87. What are iterators in Rust? Beginner 88. What is the Iterator trait? Intermediate 89. What is the difference between iter(), iter_mut(), and into_iter()? Intermediate 90. What are macros in Rust? Intermediate 91. What is the difference between declarative and procedural macros? Advanced 92. What is unsafe Rust? When do you use it? Advanced 93. What are the five unsafe superpowers? Advanced 94. What is FFI (Foreign Function Interface)? Advanced 95. What is zero-cost abstraction? Intermediate 96. What is the Drop trait? Intermediate 97. What is the difference between Copy and Clone? Intermediate 98. When is a type Copy? Intermediate 99. What is RAII in Rust? Advanced 100. How does Rust achieve memory safety without GC? Advanced