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asdf it is a version manager like nvm (Node JS), pyenv (/Python), rvm (Ruby), rustup (/Rust) and many others.
Usually, the version manager gives software developers the power to have as many versions of some toolchain as he wants. The developer even doesn't need to install any tools (even the VM itself) into the system globally. Yep, no more sudo(1) and external package repositories! Also, VM makes it possible to pin the toolchain version to this project.
Here asdf does the same: it helps to install and switch/pin the toolchains. But it works with many different toolchains at the same time! You just don't need pyenv/nvm/...vm anymore. Now you have a VM to rule them all!
Also, asdf manages many popular standalone tools like bat or kubectl. Some of /Rust powered tools we wrote about could be installed using asdf.
The core feature of asdf is the plugin system: asdf provides a simple framework and then dozens of plugins enumerate, install, remove actual software pieces.
A typical scenario looks like this:
$ asdf plugin add clojure
$ asdf install clojure 1.10.1
$ asdf global clojure 1.10.1
$ clojure --version
Clojure 1.10.1
user=> ...Any tool or even a set of tools could be pinned to the particular project and/or set as global defaults.