Part 1: Lay of the Land

# Part 1: Lay of the Land

Before we touch any hardware, we need to build a mental model. This part covers everything you need to understand *before* you start writing embedded Rust code — and more importantly, it gives you a framework for learning anything new in the ecosystem after this workshop is over.

## Who Am I?

I'm **Omar Hiari** — The Embedded Rustacean.

- Embedded engineer with years of experience in industry and academia
- Author of books on embedded Rust
- Publisher of [The Embedded Rustacean](https://www.theembeddedrustacean.com/) newsletter
- Creator of the **uFerris** learning platform you're holding right now
- Over 100 blog posts at [blog.theembeddedrustacean.com](https://blog.theembeddedrustacean.com/)

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## The Problem

Embedded Rust is exciting. The ecosystem is growing fast. But that growth creates a real challenge for learners:

- **Tutorials go stale.** APIs change. Examples that worked six months ago might not compile today.
- **Examples cover one use case.** A blinky tutorial shows you how to blink *one LED on one pin*. But what if you need a different pin? A different configuration? A different peripheral entirely?
- **Copy-paste gets you started, but doesn't get you far.** If you can only reproduce what someone else wrote, you're stuck the moment you need something slightly different.

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## Why Are You Here?

You're going to learn how to **fish**, not just eat fish.

After this workshop, you'll know how to:
- Navigate the embedded Rust ecosystem
- Read documentation effectively
- Adapt examples to *any* use case — not just the one in the tutorial

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## What I'm Going to Teach You

A **mental model** that works for every peripheral, every HAL, every driver crate:

> **Create → Configure → Control**

And how to find the answers in the docs when nobody wrote a tutorial for your exact use case.

Let's start with the ecosystem.

The Embedded Rustacean · Rust Week 2026