wasm-astar VS mask

A few years back I chose Rust as the language I was going to build side projects with. I started out building a wasm A* pathfinding demo [1] to get a better hang of it.

A little bit later I wrote a CLI task runner [2] which is defined by a simple markdown file. I find Rust to be perfectly aligned with the goals of a CLI utility: single deployable binary and very low startup cost.

Most recently I launched a side project [3] (a jigsaw puzzle website) using Rust as my backend API service. I've been slowly building up a server framework over the years and finally was able to put it to use! Yes, it took me much longer to ship something in Rust versus other languages I'm more familiar with. But after learning Rust for a few years now, it doesn't take me much more time to build a feature than it would in another language.

Early on, I ran into a lot of borrower issues and got stuck many times. But after I got over those problems, I realized that for any future hurdles I would face, I just needed to keep pushing and eventually I would find a solution. I have found that with game development or heavily stateful apps, I tend to run into borrower issues more often. But for an API service with a simple input and output, I almost never run into borrower issues.

[1]: https://github.com/jakedeichert/wasm-astar

Another alternative I'll add is my mask CLI tool. It reads a markdown file and parses it for a command structure. Markdown code blocks are used to define bash/zsh/python/ruby/node scripts all within a single file.

I also build and maintain a Rust-based CLI tool called mask. While this doesn't run in production, it powers everything from my local development workflow to my CI and production deployment flow.

It is a new project that is currently in Alpha stage. You can download from my GitHub account and play with it. It is built using Svelte, Nw.js, and mask script running.

I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I built a jigsaw puzzle website [1] with a Rust API backend and I launched it last week. It definitely took longer than if I had used Node, but I enjoy working with Rust much more.

Apart from that website, I have also open sourced a Rust CLI task runner [2] which uses markdown files as a command definition format. This is probably the most important tool I've ever written, as I have used it every single day since.

[1]: https://puzzlepanda.com

[2]: https://github.com/jakedeichert/mask

At the top level, there are three things: the server directory, the UI directory, and a maskfile.md file for using mask. Mask is a great tool for running scripts on your project. I use it all the time.