Day 12 — Bugs bugs bugs

Today I had two nice coffee chats and tidied up my learning outline. I will dive deep into Rust and Python packaging in the next few weeks.

I also added a comment on this asciimatics issue to possibly contribute codio as a "typewriter effect"! It would be awesome to see this in the basics.py example. After that, I had to set up the Travis integration for camelot again as it somehow stopped running tests on PRs. That helped me merge two fixes, and work on a fix for a long-standing bug. Later, I found that the GitHub Action for conrad had been running but not raising a PR to update new events! It would skip that step with this message: Pull request branch 'add-events-a13da1d' already exists for this commit. Skipping. I guess I need to set it up to send an alert so that it doesn't fail silently.

I had initially planned to start reading the Rust book and try out some rustlings, but ended up watching some RustConf 2020 videos. I will follow the earlier plan tomorrow!

These are the RustConf 2020 videos that I watched:

• Opening keynote: It started with a background on Rust's history. Rust was made to help Mozilla manage a 6 million line C++ codebase! It also talked a lot of the new Rust slogan: "A language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software." with a focus on how Rust is empowering everyone to become a systems programmer. A lot of people love Rust because of the cargo + crates.io + docs.rs infrastructure (according to the first speaker, it gets you hooked to actually learn the language), descriptive error messages, and a code of conduct, which Rust has had from the very start! I love how the website and learning resources are designed to help you get up and running quickly.

• How to start a solo project that you'll stick with: This talk about working on solo projects really resonated with me. It tells about setting SMART goals, showing your work to others to get motivation, and celebrating small victories! In conclusion, it mentioned that you should make a plan, and not a schedule. You should build something you care about. Break down large problems into smaller ones, and be kind to yourself.

• Rust for non-systems programmers: I thought it might be relevant for me because the speaker comes from a Python background, but it got technical way too quickly, and I couldn't understand a lot of things so I stopped in the middle. I guess I need to write some Rust first and then come back to this talk later.

• Closing keynote: You should definitely watch this one. I haven't watched a talk this awesome in a long time! It talked about the MissingNo bug in Pokémon Red and Blue which I didn't know about! I've only played Pokémon Leaf Green on a gameboy emulator :( Spoiler alert: The probability of you encountering MissingNo in the wild was based on the player name you set at the start of the game! In the end, it also taught a great lesson of being kind to everyone. You don't know the constraints that someone else is working with.