I was writing a small tool in Rust to scan folders recursively on my PC and generate a hash for each file, but it was too slow. Wondering if it was due to the PC limitations, I naturally went to Task Manager.
That was not the actual image (I didn't take a screenshot at the time), but you get the gist... The CPU was practically idle, and this tool didn't even reach over 10% cpu usage.
Did I mention that the tool is small? Very small, it only does a WalkDir function, generates a hash, and stores it in memory.
Suddenly, an idea struck me: what if I fire up multiple scanners concurrently and merge the results? After a little research, apparently it was a thing! By using both Tokio for concurrent tasks and Rayon for multi-core processing, I was able to achieve near-100% CPU usage and significantly improve the scanning speed.
Turns out I have only been using a single core, like a primitive person time-traveled from the Pentium III era in early 2000. Coming from web development, I never had to deal with such low-level stuff, and it felt great to be in control. After all, I paid for the whole PC, so it's only natural I use the whole CPU, right?