I Learned Rust In 24 Hours To Eat Free Pizza Morally

Sebastian Carlos

Jun 6, 2025

This is not just a story about pizza. As a recent Phoronix article explains, the Linux Rust subsystem got into major drama because of my humble quest.

Well, here’s my side of the story, with every kernel of truth exposed.

A Moral Quest for Pizza

Despite being an experienced programmer, I found myself down in my luck financially — mostly as a result of taking extended sabbaticals to recover from burnout.

I’m not one to handle prolonged contact with the overt authoritarianism of the typical HR department.

My bank account was approaching a segmentation fault — I wish I’d held meme stocks a bit longer in 2021.

So, I entered my familiar survival mode: Grinding LeetCode, writing job applications, and cutting luxuries like overpriced sushi delivery.

One well-known hack for programmers in dire straits is, of course, the free food circuit of programming meetups. Luck had it that a Rust meetup was scheduled for the next day, with “pizza” explicitly mentioned in the event title.

The catch? I had never touched Rust.

Here’s where my conscience started throwing exceptions: I couldn’t just freeload pizza. I had to earn each slice.

I had to become a Rustacean in just 24 hours.

Ownership, lifetimes, the borrow checker — all of the Rust Book got dumped into my brain through copious amounts of cheap instant coffee and a sleepless night.

Before leaving, I hyped myself up with some push-ups, and a shower to some 80’s synthwave, singing out loud Yazoo’s “Don’t Go” (a wise omen in retrospect). The Meetup

I entered the co-working space, armed with the ability to nod knowingly at entry-level Rust concepts.

The exposed bricks and Edison bulbs enhanced the feeling of limbo, neither fully “work” nor “social event.”

Two hours in, the smell of pepperoni and Option<Pineapple> was filling the room as the ASCII progress bar of the last speaker’s fancy TUI slides had traversed just 25%. My stomach was sending system calls.

The presentation ends, and the moment of truth arrives: The food table.

I devised a plan to maximize intake and abstractly offset my monetary shortcomings. This military-grade operation involved timed passes around the table, making sure to take sizable but stealthy bites, and securing additional slices for consumption in a secluded area, only to return later for more.

The first challenge came when a legitimate Rustacean started discussing lifetimes with me, one of the hardest topics.

“That’s right…” I managed, “The lifetimes are… almost Husserlian.”

He blinked. “Husserlian?”

Did he see through my bluff? My only choice was to double down:

“Yes the, uh, German philosopher… last name Husserl… You know, we experience time as conscious beings in a temporal horizon… All is Rust. You know, man?” My sleep-deprived brain attempted to pattern-match.

He looked confused, then nodded, maybe mistaking my panic for depth. Mission accomplished. Another slice was mine.

I was on my fourth “first” slice (plus three more surreptitiously eaten ones) and ready to leave, when someone mentioned the after-party. The After-Party

What happened next exists in my memory like fragmented data blocks.

I found myself in deep conversation with a group of Venezuelan femboy Rust developers who were building something revolutionary in the “post-capitalist space.” Their programming socks were striped pink, and their confidence in their technology was infectious.

“You should buy crypto options,” one of them suggested. “I have a hunch about a meme coin. Trust me.”

In my altered state after several Aperol spritzes, this seemed like sound financial advice. I FOMOed my tiny savings at the obscure coin with a logo of the Rust crab holding a bottle of coconut oil:

Minutes later, impossibly, the value shot up 400%. Our phones buzzed with profit notifications. The only thing to do then was to celebrate by visiting that ketamine bar everyone had been whispering about.

The Kernel Incident

In our transcendent state, over hardcore techno music, we did what any group of intoxicated nouveau riche programmers would do: We pair programmed a patch to the Linux kernel’s Rust subsystem.

It essentially replaced close to 50% of the codebase with Rust, thanks to some inspired macro magic and 100% use of our brainpower.

The tests were passing until we got bored and terminated the test process.

I considered the morality of sending such a huge patch on a whim, but I was operating under a different set of ethical principles at that point — ethics of a more cosmic nature.

We submitted it at 6:47 AM with a commit message that just read: “The crab has awakened. Prima Nocta is imposed on all unsafe languages.”

commit deadbeefb9e1d3f5a6c8e2b4d7f9a1c3e5b7d9f2a4c6e8b1d3f5a7c9e2b4d6f8a
Author: Sebastian Carlos <sebastiancarlos@protonmail.com>
Date:   Tue Jun 03 06:47:23 2025 +666

    The crab has awakened. Prima Nocta is imposed on all unsafe languages.
    
    Co-authored-by: Valentina Bitcoinia <val.php.lambo@cryptofemboys.xyz>
    Co-authored-by: Esperanza Rustacean <esperanza.zerocost@caracas.rs>
    Co-authored-by: Sir Borrow Checkington <sir.borrow.checkington@vatican.va>
    Tested-at:      The Ketamine Bar <qa@khole.io>

Pure blackout after that. I woke up two days later in my apartment.

The Reckoning

Our Linux patch had not only been rejected but had apparently been the final straw for Linus Torvalds, who announced in a profanity-laden email that he was removing all Rust code from the kernel.

“I’ve had it,” his email read. “At least C developers know when they’re drunk.”

Phoronix was in uproar about the “Ketamine Kernel Incident.” My GitHub profile had become a cautionary tale.

After soberly checking my earnings, I realized my $100 investment turned a profit of just $400 before fees and taxes. Not enough to quit my job hunt.

In retrospect, the whole experience reminded me of my last job: Good intentions, moral compromises, and spectacular burnout.

But the real shock came when I opened my wardrobe that evening, looking for clean clothes to wear to my job interview in a couple of hours:

There was a collection of striped pink programmer socks. Dozens of them, like some sort of Rust swag. Where had they come from?

But hey, at least I got pizza, and the socks were surprisingly comfortable.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this story and want to help me in these trying times, consider buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/sebastiancarlos. But honestly, I’ll use the money for pizza.