Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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In this first episode of Push to talk | Meet the Maintainers, we sit down with Andrew Gallant, the creator of ripgrep - a blazing-fast search tool that’s become a staple in every developer’s toolkit. Andrew talks us through how ripgrep's speed and efficiency set it apart from traditional search tools, why it’s critical for developers dealing with massive codebases, and the technical challenges he faced in building it.

What's inside?
0:00 Introduction
0:47 Initializing Andrew(): why “BurntSushi”?
1:42 First commit?
2:50 Open source by default?
3:30 RIP grep?!
4:35 Turning point: rg ＜ grep
5:58 ripgrep is born
7:50 Beyond rg
8:35 Crate Escape
9:14 SeenInTheWild()
11:21 Sponsorships IRL
11:42 Boss bugs
12:24 Motivation.current(): why he still ships
13:14 Pro tip
14:29 JIFF
15:39 A message from Andrew

How has ripgrep boosted your workflow? Drop a comment below!

Want to know more about open source libraries and their maintainers? Read our blog: ubuntu.com/blog/the-foundations-of-software-open-source-libraries-and-their-maintainers