Momentum
Hello again, travelers.
It’s been far too long since my last communiqué to all of you. Despite my best intentions, life has a nasty habit of getting in the way.
One thing that I observed over the course of this hiatus is how each passing week made it harder to sit down and write the next issue of Errata Exist. When it comes to forming and practicing habits I often place a lot of focus on building momentum that will help carry me through the times where I don’t feel like doing something. I tend to think of it as being a matter of either having momentum or not having it. But I think that it is equally, if not more, important to recognize the power of negative momentum. While positive momentum can carry you through a rut, negative momentum will drag you deeper and deeper down into the rut.
Despite my shortcomings, I am optimistic about and very much looking forward to the future of this newsletter. I’ve already had a handful of people reach out to me to ask questions or just to say hello. I cherish these interactions and hope to have many more of them in the future.
New Blog Post
At the end of last month I published “Why I Dislike VB.NET”, in which I unpack a—probably inexhaustive—list of the things I don’t like in VB.NET. This subject has been floating around in the back of my brain for a while now, but it wasn’t until I had a Twitter conversation about VB.NET recently that I decided to go ahead and write it.
Cool Findings
vgtk
vgtk is a declarative desktop UI framework for Rust built on GTK and gtk-rs. I have been excited about building declarative UIs in Rust every since I saw this tweet showcasing JSX-like syntax in Rust.
vgtk expands on that concept and brings a JSX/React-like syntax to Rust. I played around with it a bit this weekend and was very happy with how quickly I was able to start building a UI using it, especially having never used GTK before.
Escape from the Ivory Tower
I recently watched this talk by Simon Peyton Jones on the history of Haskell. It’s a wonderful talk that details the rather interesting history of Haskell and how the language has evolved over time.
This was the first time I’ve watched a talk by SPJ and I was energized by how passionate he is about functional programming.
That’s all I have for this week.
Until next time,
Marshall