ntietz.com: December blogs, Hurl, research, and crypto(graphy)
Hello, happy Friday, and happy new year! This month I kept busy with a few more blog posts than usual. I don't love the dark months, but it was a very productive time for me. I also got started on a couple of new projects and am nearing completion on another one, more on that after the blog updates.
Thank you so much for subscribing and for reading. As always, please share my blog posts (at work, on Mastodon or Reddit, etc.) if you like them. People seeing them and reading them motivates me to keep going!
And a request: If you're a software engineer, I'd like to interview you about documentation in your work. In particular if you have gone through a colocated-to-remote transition. More details in the side projects section, but just reply to this email or email me@ntietz.com and we'll setup a time.
Blog updates
Here are the posts from this December, with a sneaky early one from January as well:
Profiling Rust programs the easy way: There are nice tools for profiling Rust programs!
Insights and questions from the original waterfall paper: It's fun reading historical papers, and here I found and read the paper that introduced waterfall as a concept! There are some nice takeaways, and a lot of interesting questions as a result. More on that in my projects...
Lessons from implementing Hurl: I finished up my cursed programming language, Hurl! I learned a lot doing it, and it was hard and I want to do it again.
Three days of Advent of Code in Hurl: After finishing my language, I also did a few days of Advent of Code into it. Here I walk through one of the solutions. Now, I promise, we're done with Hurl content.
My reference was dropped, why is the compiler complaining about multiple borrows?: An interesting question someone had was why the compiler complains about sound code. It turns out, there's a limit on what the borrow checker can do called the Polonius problem!
Reflecting on 2023, preparing for 2024: Just my usual annual cliched reflection post. A lot happened this year! This is vulnerable and raw for me, so please read with an open heart.
I found some of my first code! Annotating and reflecting on robotics code from 2009.: A trip down memory lane for me, I found some of the first code I wrote and annotated it. A pretty fun exploration, mapwe get to see how high school Nicole wrote traction control!
Side projects
Okay, so besides writing, here's what I've been up to.
Explorations in cryptography continue to chug along. I've implemented RSA with PKCS #1 v1.5 in my toy cryptography crate, cryptoy. Coming this month will be an RSA playground and accompanying blog post, and maybe an implementation of an attack against it—no promises, I'm starting on it this month but we will see where I get on that one. Oh, and "crypto" means "cryptography," fight me.
Compiling my blog posts into the blog book is coming along nicely, too! I've done a proof of concept of the typesetting, and I've worked with an illustrator for cover art. I'm just awaiting the final draft on that, then I'm going to start doing test prints. I'm also forming an LLC for my publisher (legal reasons, blah) so that's going to be a minor delay on the project but hopefully not very long of one.
The exceptional programming language, Hurl, is a wrap. I'm done with it, I'm free! And now I'm starting on my next language, Heart. The repo exists and so far only has the design goals. I'm going to be fleshing it out with code examples this month, then start on interpreter code sometime in the next few months. If you want to pair program with me on this, please let me know! I love to do that.
And one that I'm probably most excited about is I'm starting some research with a coworker! I was fascinated by a comment about documentation in the original waterfall paper and I brought a question to her and we are doing some research to answer it. We're looking for some people to interview about documentation, so email me@ntietz.com to set up a time if you're willing.
That's all for this month! Thanks again for reading and subscribing. I hope your 2024 is off to a great start.
-Nicole