Interview 2::Part 1 – Raph Levien

Raph Levien on using Rust to build the Xi editor

Chris chats with Raph Levien about his background in software development, what attracted him to Rust, and how he’s using Rust to build the Xi Editor, a project which aims to be the fastest text editor out there, with native user interfaces and a Rust text engine.

Past work:

GIMP
GTK
GhostScript
Google Web Fonts

Current projects:

font-rs
pulldown-cmark
Xi Editor

fuzz testing
sanitizers
FreeType
HarfBuzz
ICU
Ropes

Wikipedia summary
original paper

“log n operation”, or O(log n)

Big O notation

Rust:

[Arc]
[RefCell]
[Borrow]
[AsRef]

Rust libraries

[Crossbeam]
[Rayon]

Unix philosophy

The Unix philosophy emphasizes building simple, short, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design.

Sponsors

Aleksey Pirogov
Chris Palmer
Daniel Collin
Derek Morr
Doug Reeves
Hamza Sheikh
Lachlan Collins
Leif Arne Storset
Luca Schmid
Micael Bergeron
Pascal Hertleif
Ralph Giles (“rillian”)
Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo
Raph Levien
reddraggone9
Ryan Ollos
Vesa Kaihlavirta
William Roe

(Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!)

Patreon
Venmo
Dwolla
Cash.me
Flattr
PayPal.me

Contact

New Rustacean:

Twitter: @newrustacean
Email: [email protected]

Chris Krycho

GitHub: chriskrycho
Twitter: @chriskrycho