This book assumes some basic knowledge of the Rust programming language. If you are new to Rust, the first few chapters of the official Rust book are a great prelude. Nevertheless, you should have moderate to deep knowledge of at least one programming language; basic knowledge of terminal usage will also be needed.

Having basic knowledge of computer architectures is a plus, along with basic knowledge of high-performance programming in C/C++. They are not required, though, since in this book we will cover all the base theory to understand how the performance improvements work behind the scenes.

You will need a code editor or an IDE to follow the book. Rust has been heavily tested in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, GitHub's Atom, and IntelliJ's IDEA IDE. I have personally used Atom to write the code examples, but feel free to use your favorite text editor or IDE. You will probably find plugins or extensions for your editor.

In the case of VS Code, Atom, and IntelliJ IDEA, you will find official Rust packages along with unofficial extensions. Personally, I've been using the Tokamak package for Atom.