The seed of a mental model

Some find it helpful to think of shared (&T) and exclusive (&mut T) references like so:

• &T is a compiler-checked RwLockReadGuard
  • You can have as many of these at one time as you want
• &mut T is a compiler-checked RwLockWriteGuard
  • You can only have one of these at one time, and when you do, you can have no RwLockReadGuard

The exclusivity is key.

&mut T are often called "mutable references" for obvious reasons. And following from that, &T are often called "immutable references". However, I find it more accurate and consistent to call &mut T an exclusive reference and to call &T a shared reference.

This guide doesn't yet cover shared mutability, more commonly called interior mutability, but you'll run into the concept sometime in your Rust journey. The one thing I will mention here is that it enables mutation behind a &T, and thus "immutable reference" is a misleading name.

There are other situations where the important quality of a &mut T is the exclusivity that it guarantees, and not the ability to mutate through it. If you find yourself annoyed at getting borrow errors about &mut T when you performed no actual mutation, it may help to instead consider &mut T as a directive to the compiler to ensure exclusive access instead of mutable access.