Interview 2::Part 1 – Raph Levien

Raph Levien on using Rust to build the Xi editor

Notes

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.

Links

• 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!)

Become a sponsor

• Patreon
• Venmo
• Dwolla
• Cash.me
• Flattr
• PayPal.me

Contact

• New Rustacean:
  • Twitter: @newrustacean
  • Email: [email protected]
• Chris Krycho
  • GitHub: chriskrycho
  • Twitter: @chriskrycho