About the cover
The cover shows 5 lighthouses in a storm, each kept by a crab. Beams of light join their
lamps. Lightning has struck one lighthouse and its lamp is dark, and the other 4 still
shine, so the paper boat that carries a PUT between them still finds its way.
Each chapter opens with an animal at work on the chapter’s subject.
| Chapter | Character | Scene |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Draft the owl | a blueprint of a router, the ring and a shard of 3 nodes |
| 2 | Ledger the tortoise | a ledger that receives every change before the answer is given, while lightning strikes |
| 3 | Relay the pigeons | pigeons that carry the newest line of the tortoise’s ledger to 2 other ledgers |
| 4 | The ballot cats | 3 cats in numbered boxes, 2 holding up their votes and the third wearing a crown |
| 5 | Switch the octopus | an octopus that hands a parcel labelled user-1 to the stack of boxes it belongs to |
| 6 | Bundle the beaver | a beaver that carries 4 logs to the disk in a single trip |
| 7 | Toll the gnu | a gnu beside a sign with the limit: 5 per second, a burst of 10 |
| 8 | Stamp the squirrel | a squirrel beside the 3 parts of an id |
| 9 | Recall the elephant | an elephant beside the rule for what a cache keeps |
| 10 | Latch the hermit crab | a hermit crab beside 2 tokens, of which the lower is refused |
| 11 | Post the pigeons | 2 pigeons beside a log with a mark at the committed offset |
| 12 | Shift the daemon | a daemon beside the 3 states of a job |
| 13 | Chime the penguin | a penguin beside the growing pauses between tries |
| 14 | Dash the hare | a hare beside a number written in base 62 |
| 15 | Echo the owl | an owl beside the 2 ways to build a feed |
| 16 | Crate the gopher | a gopher beside an object cut into chunks |
| 17 | Reel the whale | a whale beside a video cut into pieces of 4 seconds |
| 18 | Chirp the pigeons | 2 pigeons beside messages numbered 1 to 4 |
| 19 | Ledger the tortoise | a tortoise beside 2 entries that add up to 0 |
| 20 | The seat cats | a cat in a box numbered 12, held for 5 minutes |
| 21 | Dash the hare | a hare beside a grid of 9 squares |
| 22 | Hint the owl | an owl beside the completions of ka |
| 23 | Reach the octopus | an octopus beside the rules of a polite crawler |
| 24 | Gauge the owl | an owl beside a series stored as changes |
| 25 | Carry the beaver | a beaver beside a file moving from version 3 to 4 |
| 26 | The 2 penguins | 2 penguins beside cat becoming chats |
| 27 | Tally the squirrel | a squirrel beside a buyer and a seller who have not met |
| 28 | Count the hare | a hare beside a click counted when it happened |
The crab that appears beside the listings is Ferris, the mascot of the Rust community.