145. Herbert Wolverson

Herbert Wolverson has written three books on Rust and spent years teaching the language to engineers, chip designers, and conference audiences. He also co-maintains LibreQoS, an open-source networking tool that recently helped make school internet usable in Malawi for the first time.Herbert began programming at age six on a BBC Micro, detoured through law school, and returned to coding about a decade ago via Rust. His books — Hands-on Rust, Advanced Hands-on Rust, and Rust Brain Teasers — span beginner to advanced topics, all taught through game development, a method he’s favored since teaching himself C to build multiplayer dungeon games.In this episode, Herbert discusses why senior programmers are increasingly becoming AI prompt engineers, what that means for the next generation of developers, and how he approaches teaching a language in the age of AI. He also talks about LibreQoS, its impact in Malawi, and his ongoing project to map radio-frequency propagation for rural internet access.Mentioned in this episode:- Herbert's 86-chapter Rust roguelike tutorial- Hands-on Rust- Advanced Hands-on Rust- Rust Brain Teasers- Bracket Lib — Herbert's Rust game engine- Bevy game engine- LibreQoS- FQ Codel — the packet-shaping algorithm at the heart of LibreQoS- NLNET Foundation — funds open source internet infrastructure work, including LibreQoS- RustConf- JetBrains Rust toolsFollow Herbert:- X: https://x.com/herberticus- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/herberticus.bsky.social