Rustacean Station Asciinema with Marcin Kulik
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Jan 31, 2024 Marcin Kulik, creator of asciinema and an independent consultant focused on Elixir and Rust, dives into his groundbreaking service that records terminal sessions. He shares the inspiration behind asciinema, detailing the challenges he faced while transitioning to Rust for performance improvements. The discussion touches on the development of a GIF generator and the importance of using the right languages for different project needs. Future plans for enhancing asciinema with features like real-time terminal streaming in educational settings are also explored.
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Project As A Language Playground
- Asciinema became a playground for Marcin to learn languages; he selected tools per component based on practical trade-offs.
- The web server uses Elixir for efficiency and low CPU usage; the project evolved through Python, Go, ClojureScript, and Rust.
AVT: One Rust Engine, Many Uses
- The AVT Rust library serves multiple roles: browser WASM emulation, server-side thumbnailing, and recording analysis.
- AVT can produce a final pure-text version of any recording enabling full-text search and textual logs.
Use Rust For CLI And Embedded Libraries
- Rewrite the CLI in Rust when you need embedded Rust libraries and better UX for performance tools.
- Use Rust for CLI ergonomics and embedding AVT to add features like accurate text extraction and GIF integration.