Rust Async Patterns in Production

Rust Async Patterns in Production

This talk covers practical async Rust patterns drawn from real-world production experience. We go beyond basic async/await syntax into structured concurrency, task supervision, cancellation safety, and backpressure — the patterns that separate robust systems from async code that merely compiles.

Topics covered

• Structured concurrency with JoinSet — track task lifetimes, propagate errors, cancel on drop
• Cancellation safety — which futures are safe at yield points and which are not
• Backpressure with bounded channels — why unbounded channels hide load problems
• Select! patterns — biased selection, cancellation tokens, and shutdown signals
• Spawning strategies — when to spawn, when to join, when to block_in_place

Prerequisites

Familiarity with basic async Rust (async fn, .await, tokio::spawn). No advanced knowledge required.