Etchings

There are many ways to use different Arcana to solve a problem. Need to pass a math test? Could Fate it to be successful; use Life to give yourself more raw intelligence; use Matter to make your test a clone of the smart kid's test; boost your knowledge of math with Mind; coax the Spirit of the test to pass itself; speak to the last teacher's ghost with Death; or create more Time to study. Could even use any of those to make other people test worse and shoot for the curved grading.

What about being in a car going down the road, and another car runs the red and is about to slam into you? You could use Forces to reduce the other car's velocity, or create more space between them with Space or Time. Matter or Death could force the other car off its path. Life, Mind, Fate, Spirit, Forces, or Time could give you the reflexes to react. If you're going to get hit, Life, Death, or Time could fix the damage to your body.

Need to find someone? Could simply Fate your paths to cross; find where they were last with Time; find who last saw them with Mind; or trace their steps with Matter, Death, Space, or Spirit.

I like Zig's syntax more than Nim's, but Nim is much further along.

Yeah, Zig isn't 1.0 yet, but it seems like most new (relative) languages having the tooling squared away.

Zig does cross-compiling better than Rust, probably almost as good as Go, so that's cool.

Before Go sorted out package versions, it still had go get, which worked well enough for most people.

Looks like Zig tells people to go the "./vendor/" route, cloning in your dependencies. Not awful, but without at least some tooling, kind of a bummer.

I like having a standard, official package management solution. Python has many usable package managers, all of which have their own merits. It took me years to find poetry, which is my (current) favorite.

Go had a lot as well, before they sorted everything out.

Rust? cargo. Done.

Heck, even JavaScript has npm leading the pack, with some folks on yarn or pnpm. And, npm rips off the features that the other managers introduce after a while, so there's no major reason to switch off of npm for most people.

Nim has nimble.

Elixir has mix.

Technically you could install all Python packages to your global scope, but that is a pretty sure-fire way to dork up your entire system.

Zig likes to promote that their language compiler is also a compiler for any C program, and that's dandy, but still - fragmentation. Every Zig project comes with a build file that is 22 SLOC!

Rust allows the customization of its build process via a build file, but it's rarely required!

Go has programs that can bake extra stuff into the binary. I haven't used one in a looong time, but I remember them/it being fairly simple.

Python ... doesn't compile, which will probably forever bug me.

TypeScript doesn't either, not technically. Can webpack it down to a all-in-one runnable node file and distribute that, though still requires the user to have the runtime installed. Most devs will, sure, but users? Very unlikely. Deno moves to solve that with their executable builds, but they're still sort of buggy.

Java .jars don't count if Python doesn't.

Plus like holy crap, ever unzip an enterprise jar? It's like GBs of stuff. I stopped the unzip one time after like 50 GB.

I'm joining the most realistic flight simluation network, and starting with the most difficult position: ATC.

The programs and tools I use to be productive in the terminal.

I've been going back and forth on whether or not to post this at all for some time. I don't actually have any specific point to reach, no fact to claim. Between books, movies, TV, and video games, I've noticed a reoccurring trend in storytelling and world building: the use of decline.

I figure that there are 4 different types of development:

• Create something new
• Add features
• Maintenance
• Tie two programs together

Most of what I've done at work is 2, 3, and 4. Most of what I do at home is 1 and 2.

When I'm at home, I write programs from scratch or add to the ones I've already written. I get to be creative in what, when, why, and how. This is fun. If I need to maintain old software, generally I'll wipe it away and start from scratch with a new tech stack. I have a list of projects that would be interesting to work on, but most of the ideas that have been on the list for a while require me to interface with other programs - I can't just go and make something without any care about how it works with the rest of the world; I have to think about how other people have written their code and how I am constrained by that.

At work, I don't have the freedom to (completely) choose what, when, why, and how:

• The what is what PM/PO/etc. determine should be done
• The when is both "during work hours, generally", and "before so and so deadline"
• The why is because I'm getting paid
• The how is determined by the existing tech stack that the company/BU/Org/group/team uses

I don't have most of the freedom of working on my own projects at home, but I do generally have the ability to influence, question, and assist with the software that's around what I'm responsible for working on. If I have a question, I can ask. If I find a problem, I can either offer help to fix it, or just tell others to do so. If I need help, I can ask for it.

They're two very different environments, each with their pros and cons. Generally, the more programming I do at work, the less I do at home, and the opposite is also true.

I've played an additional 30 hours of Monster Hunter Rise since my last post. During this time, I've experimented with other weapons (hammer, dual blades, and bow), crafted several end-game meta armor sets, crafted many more decorations and talismen, and continued to train buddies. My hunter rank is 72.

The game is still fun, though I'm relying more on the online multiplayer interactions with random people to fuel spontaneity. Dual Blades is a fun weapon, and I'll probably focus on it after playing through Hammer more, which I am definitely enjoying. I expected to like Bow, but since I've played, almost exclusively, melee weapons in my time in Monster Hunter games, switching to ranged feels very weird.

Hunting for better talismen is annoying; I have a few that have a skill I want and a gem slot, and that's pretty much good enough. I've been able to farm monsters for decorations, which have gotten me most of the skills I want. When paired with following guides for end-game meta armor sets, I feel strong, but not overpowered. Monster Hunter is good about rewarding player skill increases, as well as character strength increases.

At this point, I think I've seen everything in the game - the additional post-story monsters, the apex variations, and the crimson something or other that has jet engines on its body (though I haven't fought it). I don't have another game to play right now, so I'm still going on hunts to get materials and have fun, but as I'm generally a very goal-oriented player, I'm starting to get blurry on what's next for me.

Monster Hunter Rise is the second Monster Hunter game I've played, the first being World. I've finished the "main" quests after 33 hours.

A massive list of articles that I found interesting this year.

For years, I've been using VirtualBox to run Linux virtual machines (currently using Arch [btw]), but I've gotten started with WSL, and it's fantastic. Microsoft is certainly trying to make the developer community like them, and here's another win for everyone.