These past weeks, I’ve been reading books related to our current reality. Having a library near me helps and, luckily, most books I want to read are available there or via a reservation. Besides, there’s no room in my narrow bookcase any more.

Regarding libraries, I'll shamefully admit that this is my first time actively using their services. As a kid, I seldom went to one, and mostly to meet friends who were studying. Though I had a card, I don't remember loaning any books, and I studied better alone. In any case, I’ve decided to check the library before thinking of buying any book. Moreover, libraries are wonderful, they’re not only a way to get access to books—ultimately to knowledge— regardless of income, they also serve as a space for the community.

“On Tyranny”, “How Democracies Die” and “The Anatomy of Fascism” are a few of the books lying around on my desk. I also have a dozen more on my library wishlist, that I’d like to read during the year—also, as part of an effort to read more and reduce screen time—mainly centred around the same topics: democracy, tyranny and the history of the World Wars.

I’m the type of person that gets hooked into a topic or skill and wants to go deeper. Some people might say I get too focused or obsessed, a healthy kind of obsession.

Today, in a fleeting thought, I contemplated the possibility of learning to play fight games and buying a fight stick—I actually had the same thought process many years in Spain and went ahead with it—but then remembered the many hours I’d have to put into it and stopped. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, my problem is my limited time on Earth and too many interesting things to learn.

Salsa is one of those skills that the more I do it, the more I want to understand and get better at. It’s also extremely fun, of course. There’s only been two months at best, but I have thoughts and opinions about social dancing, the way to learn Salsa and things I would love to see while practicing. Most of my thoughts are impractical in the typical way a class is conducted, and being the absolute beginner than I am, they might be very simplistic and narrow, and will get things mixed or confused.

My salsa thoughts 🌶️

Since issues 44 and 72, which were sent in February and November 2024 respectively, there has been no mentioned of Vim again and this is a good a time as any.

After all this time, although I haven’t mastered Vim, I’ve become proficient enough to use it every day at work with some ease. My typical use case is single file text editing, within the IDE (VS Code). It might be heretical, but it works for me.

By no means, I could consider myself good at Vim, there are plenty of more things to learn and ways to be more efficient. The thing is that I’m not that interested in those things right now, given that 99% of what I do—simple, no crazy text editing—is accomplished with what I already know. Nonetheless, from time to time, I try to read the chapter of Practical Vim I haven’t finished and practice.

In issue 44, I was trying to learn the basics with the game “vim adventures”. It’s a decent game to learn the basics and get some practice, but what really made things click was the book “Practical Vim”. What I appreciate about the book is how it presents the “Vim way” of editing text in a way that makes sense. Reading the many useful tips—the book is composed of 120 of them—shows you the best ways to think about editing in Vim in different scenarios based on your needs.

This will be a short one this week, followed by a longer list of links and articles.

The past two weeks I finally came back to a study routine of sorts. Not a long one, at most one hour long, but typically thirty minutes. In the past newsletter, I wrote that I wasn’t really that interested in learning about software any more, for various reasons. Salsa and guitar have been the things I’ve practiced the most.

The question lingered on my mind all week, why am I not enjoying learning about the field any more? Partially it’s because of the turbulent times, but the other part of the answer was the disappointment in the software industry, a disenchantment with it or in where things have gone after the pandemic compared to what I envisioned. Put another way, I wonder if being a software developer for the next ten or twenty years, working in the —let’s say— typical way, is for me.

With the question on my mind, I thought that if I wanted to resume studying, it should be something fun and interesting, even though it might not be related to work or might advance my career, and with low expectations. That’s why I’ve started putting some time into reading Crafting Interpreter. While I have the physical book, I’m reading it online —it’s free— so I can have it side by side with my editor.

Happy spring! This time of the year is one of the bests in London. After the dark, cold and rainy end of the year, we get some beautiful respite.

As you can already tell, I haven’t been focusing on the newsletter much. In fact, I haven’t even learnt or done anything software related outside of work. No Rust, no Python or anything. Part of me wants to come back to studying an hour a day and also set a writing schedule, another part has no desire or passion to do it. It’s disconcerting.

I’ve been doing other things instead, like working out with an emphasis on rehabilitating my lower back injury, practicing the guitar more often, reading books and playing video games (currently playing Split Fiction, an incredible game, and The House in Fata Morgana) and finally, learning to dance salsa!

There’s also the state of the world and all the different fronts happening at the moment. An example of where my mind’s at is the last email, which I’d like to continue exploring, and also the interesting links. These are strange times, more than usual.