Rusting Properly

Some general guidelines:

• Use std::mem::replace and std::mem::swap when you can.
• Use .into() and .to_owned() over .to_string().
• Prefer passing references to the data over owned data. (Don't take String, take &str. Don't take Vec<T> take &[T]).
• Use generics, traits, and other abstractions Rust provides.
• Avoid using lossy conversions (for example: don't do my_u32 as u16 == my_u16, prefer my_u32 == my_u16 as u32).
• Prefer in place (box keyword) when doing heap allocations.
• Prefer platform independently sized integer over pointer sized integer (u32 over usize, for example).
• Follow the usual idioms of programming, such as "composition over inheritance", "let your program be divided in smaller pieces", and "resource acquisition is initialization".
• When unsafe is unnecessary, don't use it. 10 lines longer safe code is better than more compact unsafe code!
• Be sure to mark parts that need work with TODO, FIXME, BUG, UNOPTIMIZED, REWRITEME, DOCME, and PRETTYFYME.
• Use the compiler hint attributes, such as #[inline], #[cold], etc. when it makes sense to do so.
• Try to banish unwrap() and expect() from your code in order to manage errors properly. Panicking must indicate a bug in the program (not an error you didn't want to manage). If you cannot recover from an error, print a nice error to stderr and exit. Check Rust's book about Error Handling.