Build Your First REST API in Rust - CCNY Workshop

Mar 23, 20262 min read

Earlier this month, I ran my first in-person workshop, “Build Your First REST API in Rust,” for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) at the City College of New York (CCNY). That’s a lot of acronyms, and it went well!

It was a great group, very engaged, and I enjoyed chatting with several students afterwards. About 30 people attended, and we built a CRUD API together from scratch using Axum.

My goal was to make Rust feel more approachable and to introduce a practical topic that’s often missing from a school curriculum: building REST APIs.

One thing I’m thinking about for next time is easing into the command-line setup a bit more, but overall I was really happy with how it went.

A few photos from the session:

About 30 students following along during the CCNY Rust workshop. Workshop participants looking at a README file on a projected screen during the session. Tyler presenting “Build Your First REST API in Rust” workshop at CCNY. Group photo of students and instructor after the Rust API workshop at CCNY. If you want to try it yourself, here are the materials:

I’m planning to run more workshops like this in the future.

See you there, maybe!