Entry 22
Had a MISERABLE broswer bug this week, specifically about time inputs in Safari. I’ll write up a short blog post about it before too long, so I won’t go too far into it, but spoiler alert: it was fixed by adding a vendor prefix css property: background: -webkit-control-background;. Tore my hair out on that one.
I’ve decided to take the plunge on Rust - and part of that is due to watching a few talks from Bryan Cantrill, of Oxide Computers. Particularly this one is a blast; he essentially takes 90 minutes to tour through his history with programming languages (of which he is not a bullheaded systems ascetic– server side javascript was a revelation for him) and eventually lands at Rust is the current pinnacle for him.
So I bought a couple books: “the book” (as it’s colloquially known) from the Rust team, and an O’Reilly book. Excited to go through them.
This was also good because it gave me the kick in the ass I needed to finish up on some of the C stuff I was working on. Can’t really tackle Rust without having your “C-legs”, I figure. So I finally finished the K&R (which was definitely rewarding in the later chapters) and have been rewriting some of my cryptopals solutions in C.
And I’ve honestly been having a lot of fun with the rewrites! I really enjoy writing C, even if it’s fairly unforgiving at points. The biggest takeaway from the experience so far has been how much Bob Nystrom’s Crafting Interpreters has helped me in being productive in C. Everything from structure, to structuring memory ownership, to helpful patterns and api design. I know that wasn’t the point of the book, but man it’s been instrumental.
I finished Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay this week (book 3 of the Neapolitan Novels), and MAN it’s good. It ends on such an OH NO note too; I’m excited to read the final novel.
But first I’ve started Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I know really nothing about this trilogy, other than it’s a very thourough and well-regarded story about colonizing Mars. I am VERY excited.