You know how they say, "solve your own problems". When asked what should I build? Or something along those lines. Well I finally have a problem that I'd like to solve myself. I might also have some tools to be able to build it. Since I've upgraded Zig to 0.15.2 the debuggers have stopped working. I've been told that if I build LLDB from source it should work. I don't want to do that. I don't even like the config for debuggers. They don't make a lot of sense. Plus I really want something to build. So debuggers it is. Debugging in linux is not the greatest experience at the moment so I'd like to remedy that at least for myself. Or at least try. How hard could it be? He says nervously. Luckily for me I've been working out how to get a window started and rendering strange gradients into them. So the next step is obviously to build a debugger. It's only logical.
Some "small" roadblocks
There are some problems. I haven't the faintest clue on how a debugger works. All I know is how to run a child process and sort of control it, maybe. Now that I think of it, I don't know how to control the child process at all. Before I even get there, I'd need to figure out how to render fonts on an X11 window. Seems like a good place to start. Not as scary as a debugger yet still adjacent enough to count as useful. I'll know if it's working as I can use it to debug the debugger itself. I like that idea. It might be the first tool/software I've truly built for myself from a problem I'm having. I've always wondered where to people find these problems in the first place. It's a bit of catch 22. I'm not sure I'm using catch 22 correctly here. It sounds right.
Finding problems to solve
Is something I've always wondered. I've seen a lot of interviews, videos or podcasts where programmers solve a problem for themselves. I've always wondered how come I've never had any "problems". Turns out to have problems all you need to do is venture out and just build stuff. While you build stuff you start to notice things that just don't work as you expect or work at all. It might be a website or a tool or whatever. I've found one problem to solve and all of a sudden I think I'm an expert on the subject matter. Anywho, the key is to just build stuff. Follow your curiosity, venture into areas of programming that you haven't before or you find intimidating. For me it was desktop programming from scratch. I had no idea how a window opened and how you put stuff into it. Now I have some idea. Guess that's it really. At least that's one way of finding problems to solve. I'm not really someone who has a lot of problems with software as long as they work. So it's taken me a while to find one. I'm glad I did.
So let's go build a debugger. Like I said, how hard could it be.