Last year I used mainly crystal. This year I’m thinking pharo smalltalk, if I can pick it up in time
I also want to do visualizations, not sure how possible that is with smalltalk.
I always use Rust, because I cannot use it at work and I am still bad with it.
New Years resolution the past 5 years: I will get better with Rust.
…and I do get better but somehow it always feels like it’s not enough. Like, I’m still an imposter.
I can program an entire embedded USB keyboard/mouse firmware from scratch that can do all sorts of things no keyboard has ever done before yet I still feel like a newbie somehow. Like there’s all these people that talk about traits and mutli-threaring with async and GPU and AI stuff and I’m like, “I wrote an embedded_hal crate that lets you use both 8 and 16-channel multiplexers simultaneously!” or, “I wrote an interface that let’s you use the extra space in your RP2040 flash memory as a filesystem!”
Yet everything I ever write in Rust always just uses the most basic and simple features because I still have trouble with complex lifetimes (passing them around quickly gets too confusing for me) and traits that work with non-basic types (because in the world of embedded 'static is king).
Good news: if you’re writing #Rust and only using basic features of the language, you’re doing it right.
People who use the advanced stuff either have unique, interesting challenges, or they’re over-engineering. Since the former are overrepresented in the blogosphere, you’re probably comparing yourself to them. But just because their problems are interesting doesn’t mean yours are not! Nor does it mean you have to use the same solutions.
If you can solve interesting problems (it sounds like you can!) and keep the code simple, more power to you!
Maybe you should work more on you self-esteem instead of rust?
Doesn’t seem healthy to be good at something and not recognizing it as an accomplishment.
Haha, well… I have plenty of self-esteem but not Rust-specific self-esteem. I still have imposter syndrome with that language.
I’m a top notch expert in Python and JS though! 😁👍
I wrote PyMinifier which required such a deep understanding of Python it kinda broke my brain writing it for a while, haha. I eventually figured everything out though and got an even deeper understanding of the language and its features.
For JS it has just been years and years and years of knowing 100 ways to do what I want in JS but none ever seeming to be, “correct”. Then eventually I realized there’s no best way to do basically anything in JS and that’s when the true enlightenment came 🤣
If you look at anyone’s JS code and think to yourself, “ugh, there’s got to be a better way to do this” chances are you’re wrong. All the ways will be equally shitty for any number of different reasons! 😆
This year I’m thinking of a real challenge and writing brainfuck with butterflies.
Or Rust. Rust is the way.
I will try to learn rust while doing it, seems like an up and coming language with some interesting features.
I never get past the first 10 days anyway due to how long they start to take and how many things are going on in December.
I hate the ones that turn out to require some niche mathematical knowledge too…
I’m going to try with an awful language so I can better criticise it in future.
I like to use lisp. It is about the only time I get to use it, and I get a little better each year.
