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What programming/technical projects have you been working on?
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
Lately I have a lot more free time (gave up YouTube, Reddit, and video games for Lent), so I have been able to spend a lot more time coding at home. Somehow I became fixated with Rust and have been reading through "The Book." After reading through some of the beginning parts, I decided the best way to learn the language is a trial by fire. So, I found a graphics library last night and started working on just drawing shapes on the screen. Tonight, I want to try and just make some sort of interactive art with it. Eventually I want to make some simple games.
My problem with coding at home is that I am such a flake. I pick something up, get through a tutorial or two and let something else catch my attention when it starts getting difficult, resetting the cycle. I am determined to not let this be the case here.
I found that using something like Taiga to track what I'm doing and when really helps to keep me focused. You don't have to go full-blown project management software, but if you use some kind of task tracking, it can really help you zone in on the things that you want to learn or do.
I've gotten back into fiddling with Rocket. I haven't hit any particular problems or had any issues. Mostly just feeling out what it would look like to start leveraging Rust for more web projects. I don't know if that's viable for my company (we're pretty heavily into Python, PHP, and a tiny bit of Go) but it's always good to keep an open mind about things. Rust is a fun language, and I have been enjoying the brief bits of time that I have been spending on it. I haven't fully wrapped my head around the concept of Rust ownership, so that's what I'm focusing on now.
I've been hip deep in some intense Angular projects (backed by DRF). This is the structure I use for most "application"-y projects. The most recent project has a larger dataset than what we typically have (millions of rows of transactional data instead of thousands) and it has been fun and interesting dealing with that reasonably. I don't think there's anything particularly special about the approach that we've taken (model the data properly, use celery to update the data frequently, optimize the requests that are being made, etc) but there have been a few times when the client has been impressed with how fast the load time is (generally "just about instant") so that's been a good time.
Been working on the Cataclysm mods. Finding it surprisingly-fulfilling. Managed to add 3D printing functionality and tools to Homestead. Adding 3D-printed firearms to showcase it.
The latter mod's development is partially fueled by the fact that I'm stuck on implementing OS installation for in-game computers. Not surprising, given that I'm effectively creating a new type of interaction: not only are there no working personal computers in the game (the closest you get would be hardcoded single-purpose security consoles), but they aren't optimized for handling in-game software, either. The problem is elaborated upon here.
The OS problem is the only thing holding me from releasing Stage I (beta) of Project APEX. Once Stage I is published, I can start working on implementing suit modules as "tool mods" (embedded parts of an item), rather than wearable items that offer advantages even without being worn with a suit.
I've been trying to automate the setup of various software on my VPS and Raspberry Pi via Ansible. So far things are going pretty smoothly, so I'm pleased :)