Please Clap
My company uses two languages right now: Dart & Rust. Dart with Flutter for mobile applications and Rust for command-line and GUI applications. Since it is just me for the forseeable future, I’ve been focusing on cross-platform tools that challenge me. It isn’t exactly the most practical way to ship but I’d like to use company time to build my knowledge and add to my toolbox. In the month or so I’ve been using these two languages I’m reminded that it is hard to handle context switching between projects and how much I appreciate a team with a more product focused member. The only person that can stop scope creep right now is me.
I have also learned Rust is a harder language to pick up than Dart, and in order to really learn Rust, I have to slow down and use the resources available to me. The way I learned Go was by doing things I’d usually do in Python with a small go script. My approach these days is to “read the manual” and then get started. This has been helpful for understanding concepts around Rust’s ownership system (you can read my notes here). Over time I’m going through each chapter of the Rust book (print or online) and taking detailed notes for my digital garden. Hopefully they can help you review the material if its hard to grasp or remember. All of that aside, my point is that Rust requires that I slow down a little bit and build smaller projects while continuing to build features for my main projects. I’m working on a small CLI using the clap package. It’s like being a junior engineer again. I would power through tasks during the day and in the evenings try to get a deeper understanding of what was asked of me.
I find Dart to be way easier. Rust is interesting but I’m not having fun quite yet. This is likely due to Dart’s familiarity and flexibility. Itshares a lot with languages used commonly in application development, like ES5 JavaScript and Java. Plus the dx for Flutter is fantastic. I really appreciate the hot reload and ability to easily test my application on both platforms. Sure, you can quickly whip up features in a web app, but there’s something magical about seeing an app hot reload on your phone or in an iOS simulator. I’ve been using the material widgets for Soulbloom, and they take a lot of the overhead out of the process of writing client side code.
Learning React was similar for me. I started learning modern web development in earnest after I felt that I had a firm grasp of JavaScript. State machine patterns were brand new and difficult to wrap my head around. “UI as a function of state[1]” is the key pattern that was being discussed and taught as the ecosystem moved away from lifecycle methods into hooks.
Designing an application and mapping out the state is challenging. Elm’s usage of messages[2] to describe the way an action (sort of like redux action types[3]) mutates state is great for building mental models. Iced uses the Elm architecture, which has been great for conceptualizing and writing my application. The limiting factor remains my knowledge of Rust.
As I continue to build and learn, I want to express more gratitude towards Blake Watson. He has a phenomenal post about finishing side projects. You should give it a read if you struggle to finish your projects.
