The week ending 06/01/19

One of the fun things about the beginning of the year is it is a time of planning for the year. This year I not only set out some of overly ambitious goals for the year but also managed to think about some 5 year goals. Well the 5 year goals are less definite more where I want to head. To give guidance/direction to the year long goals. Planning that far ahead is quite alien to me but I think it has some value.

The next step is actually starting to work on the goals. Which pretty much means figuring out how to execute them. Some things are obvious, for instance I have a number of books I want to read, so just make time and read. This is also true for learning Haskell, I have the book so carve out time to study.

Having thought longer term I am find myself happier to spend some time learning. In fact I suspect I will spend about 50% of my time learning this year and then gradually reduce it next year.

I kind of arrived at the decision to use Rust for most dev work. This means I am going to take a hit in productivity with its not quite so mature libraries? Well when thinking 5 years into the future I started to think about C++ and thought that there is no reason for me to still be using it at home for the things I create. Having tried many programming languages I am happiest using a system level language and Rust seems the most viable alternative at the moment. So why not move to it now? I have played with it a few times over the past year or two so know what I am getting into.
I took a brief look at the language called Zig, it seems like a nice language but is trailing Rust in terms of maturity. I am not attached to Rust so if Zig matures and I like it I many try a few things in that. I guess 2019 could be the year Jai arrives, I suspect it will be good but every language take a while to mature. Again something I will play with and see if it fits with my goals.

So all this thinking/research took much of the week. At least now I feel like I have a plan in place and a strategy to execute it.

Deciding to return to blogger as my blogging platform should make these rambling updates more frequent. They are good for me to clarify my thoughts. The reason for the return is  I am trying to spot any micro optimisations that can be applied to my life. Simple changes/rules that can applied to give small increases in productivity. Yeah I know want increase productivity from micro optimisations while deciding to take some large hits else where.

Anyway, an example might be my usage of my laptop vs my desktop. I am more productive coding on my desktop than on my laptop. Duel screens and a nice keyboard just make it more efficient. A laptop is great for research, youtube, writing blog posts. It also lets me code/work where my desktop is not available. However sometimes I just use my laptop for coding when I could use my desktop. Just having a simple rule that says if the desktop is available use it, may slightly increase my productivity. A simple change to make.

I think that sums up the week.

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