Prerequisites

Installing Rust and Python

You will need Rust and Python installed to follow along with the examples here.

For Rust, go to rustup.rs. This gives you rustc and cargo, which is all we need.

For Python, I recommend uv. It replaces the pile of tools I used to reach for — pyenv for interpreters, virtualenv for environments, pip for packages — with a single one, and it will install the right Python for you if you don’t have it.

# macOS / Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

A typical project looks like this:

# Create a project
uv init somepyproj
cd somepyproj

# Pin the Python version for this project
uv python pin 3.13

# Add a dependency
uv add polars

# Run something inside the project environment
uv run python -m somepyproj.main

uv creates the virtual environment for you the first time you need one, so there is no separate “activate the venv” step. uv add writes the dependency into pyproject.toml and records the exact resolved version in uv.lock, which is the Python equivalent of Rust’s Cargo.lock.

A note on versions

Both sample projects in this book pin their dependencies exactly and commit their lockfiles, so the code you build should behave the same as the code the benchmarks were run against. At the time of writing that means:

Both of these ecosystems move quickly, and polars in particular has changed its API substantially over the years. If you are reading this well after it was written, expect some drift.

Installing the Code

The code for this book can be found here: https://github.com/PedramNavid/rust-for-data

git clone git@github.com:PedramNavid/rust-for-data.git

The Rust examples live in wxrs, and the Python examples live in wxpy.