Getting comfortable with Zig
The news of the week would be getting familiar and comfortable with Zig. All I did was read the language reference, solve some advent of code and then do some network stuff related to building the browser. The reason I wanted to learn Zig in the first place, to see if I can build a simulator and run the browser in it. Right now the boundaries of the browser and how my code will interact with them is unclear so the simulator has not been started yet. So far, all that is done is get the URL from the stdin and parse it. The next step is to support various schemes, I'm not sure how I should structure the code so that it's slightly better than my first version in Go. The Go version is quite the spaghetti, this was done on purpose as I was more interested in getting things to work over anything else. There are some parts of the spaghetti I can extract but I think for the most parts the original is fine. No point optimizing anything at this point. Since, I don't have a lot of experience, patterns have to appear over time of programming. Upfront thinking about them does not seem to work for me.
I'd like to do more
Compared to what I was doing just a couple of months ago, it's way better. The work is consistent, so is all the other things that are important to me. It's come to a point where the atomic does not seem enough, as I do feel that I can do better, I have a lot more that I can do, and I want to do more. I've been trying a few things, namely having a habit tracker to track how effectively I'm following through on the things I want to. It's the afternoon really that fucks me up. I'm keeping an open mind and I believe that an idea will surface. What are you are seeking, is seeking you. At the same time, I'm quite proud of the progress I've made over the last couple of months, I've come a long way in a short period of time. It's just an uncomfortable phase when changes are ready to happen, I just don't know what those changes are.
Pale blue dot
Was having a chat with my mate about the pale blue dot, I just remembered this today. Carl Sagan's Cosmos is on my most favorite books ever. This section of Cosmos the TV show makes me quite emotional. It helps put things in perspective. It's something to watch when we think our problems are going to be the end of us. We are so tiny and insignificant compared to the universe, yet we exist, so do you and me. The chances of being alive is unfathomable, hope I make the best of it.
I think that's pretty much it for this week, not a lot has happened. But the Zig progress has been quite incredible. I honestly thought it would be at least a couple of months before I would find myself comfortable. But consistent effort over two and a half weeks does wonders. I've learned that early on it's best to do a new habit daily. It's been a game changer.
Have a good weekend :)