I want to build a command-line application that lets me browse and watch online videos in a fairly normal way. The app would download each video locally, play it, and remove the file afterward. Ideally, it would work without requiring an account or an official API key.
The main goal is to keep resource usage very low because I'd like to run it on an older computer while gaming. I'd also like to limit the download speed so the application doesn't consume all available Wi-Fi bandwidth.
Python is my first thought, but I'm wondering whether C++, C, or Rust would be a better fit if I want to minimize memory use and maximize performance. I have built several hobby and professional applications, but I'm not an expert in this particular area. What architecture, language, libraries, or existing resources would you recommend?
2 Answers
Start by separating the project into components: a text-based browsing interface, a metadata/search layer, a download manager with rate limiting, and a playback process. Let a mature external media player handle decoding instead of implementing video playback yourself. You can also stream or use temporary files rather than keeping a permanent library. Measure memory and CPU usage with a prototype before choosing a lower-level language; profiling will tell you whether Python is actually a problem. If it is, the same design can later be reimplemented in Rust or C++ while keeping the components separate.
For this kind of application, the language probably won’t be the performance bottleneck. Downloading the video is limited mainly by the network, and playback is usually handled by an optimized media player or decoder. Even Python should be able to coordinate browsing, downloading, and launching a player without trouble. If avoiding an interpreter and minimizing baseline memory usage are important, C++ or Rust would be reasonable choices, but the practical difference may be small compared with the media player and downloaded video itself.
My main concern is the interpreter’s baseline memory usage on an older machine, since I want the application running alongside a game. I’m less worried about raw download speed.