Congrats to @andrewrk & team to the new Zig v0.13.0 release! So exciting! 🚀🤩
Thankfully there were only very minor changes to be done on my end this time around, and I've just updated the build file & readme for https://thi.ng/wasm-api to be compatible with this new Zig version (the older build files are still kept around for those who might need it...). Also tested all the bundled examples, all working fine!
A week ago was the 1st anniversary of this solo instance & more generally of my fulltime move to Mastodon. A good time for a more detailed intro, partially intended as CV thread (pinned to my profile) which I will add to over time (also to compensate the ongoing lack of a proper website)... Always open to consulting offers, commissions and/or suitable remote positions...
Hi, I'm Karsten 👋 — indy software engineer, researcher, #OpenSource author of hundreds of projects (since ~1999), computational/generative artist/designer, landscape photographer, lecturer, outdoor enthusiast, on the ND spectrum. Main interest in transdisplinary research, tool making, exploring techniques, projects & roles amplifying the creative, educational, expressive and inspirational potential of (personal) computation, code as material, combining this with generative techniques of all forms (quite different to what is now called and implied by "generative AI").
Much of my own practice & philosophy is about #BottomUpDesign, interconnectedness, simplicity and composability as key enablers of emergent effects (also in terms of workflow & tool/system design). Been adopting a round-robin approach to cross-pollinate my work & learning, spending periods going deep into various fields to build up and combine experience in (A-Z order): API design, audio/DSP, baremetal (mainly STM32), computer vision/image processing, compiler/DSL/VM impl, databases/linked data/query engines, data structures impl, dataviz, fabrication (3DP, CNC, knit, lasercut), file formats & protocols (as connective tissue), "fullstack" webdev (front/back/AWS), generative & evolutionary algorithms/art/design/aesthetics/music, geometry/graphics, parsers, renderers, simulation (agents/CFD/particles/physics), shaders, typography, UI/UX/IxD...
Since 2018 my main endeavor has been https://thi.ng/umbrella, a "jurassic" (as it's been called) monorepo of ~185 code libraries, addressing many of the above topics (plus ~150 examples to illustrate usage). More generally, for the past decade my OSS work has been focused on #TypeScript, #C, #Zig, #WebAssembly, #Clojure, #ClojureScript, #GLSL, #OpenCL, #Forth, #Houdini/#VEX. Earlier on, mainly Java (~15 years, since 1996).
Formative years in the deep end of the #Atari 8bit demoscene (Chip Special Software) & game dev (eg. The Brundles, 1993), B&W dark room lab (since age 10), music production/studio (from 1993-2003), studied media informatics, moved to London initially as web dev, game dev (Shockwave 3D, ActionScript), interaction designer, information architect. Branched out, more varied clients/roles/community for my growing collection of computational design tools, which I've been continously expanding/updating for the past 20+ years, and which have been the backbone of 99% of my work since ~2006 (and which helped countless artists/designers/students/studios/startups). Creator of thi.ng (since 2011), toxiclibs (2006-2013), both large-scale, multi-faceted library collections. Early contributor to Processing (2003-2005, pieces of core graphics API).
Worked on dozens of interactive installations/exhibitions, public spaces & mediafacades (own projects and many collabs, several award winning), large-scale print on-demand projects (>250k unique outputs), was instrumental in creating some of the first generative brand identity systems (incl. cloud infrastructure & asset management pipelines), collaborated with architects, artists, agencies, hardware engineers, had my work shown at major galleries/museums worldwide, taught 60+ workshops at universities, institutions and companies (mainly in EMEA). Was algorithm design lead at Nike's research group for 5 years, working on novel internal design tools, workflows, methods of make, product design (footwear & apparel) and team training. After 23 years in London, my family decided on a lifestyle change and so currently based in the beautiful Allgäu region in Southern Germany.
So, to get back onto having fun with programming after some bad experiences with #rust people I decided to do a bit of #nim (skull) to get back into the groove again.
One thing that I really like about nim is just how natural and extremely readable it feels. just being allowed to overload stuff, being able to pretty easily just extend stuff small things like indexing a 2D array with a point or that making a contains functino automatically lets me use the "if point in grid" style syntax is really nice.
The one thing from #zig that I kind of miss is that each struct kind of works like a namespace where you can add your functions that works on that type, it kind of makes the code more ordered, because as I end up doing it in my code, it does become a bit more cluttered since everything is on the top level.
Another really nice thing that I like with nim is that it allows me to use the (oca)ml type function calls, so that I can do "seq.add blah" rather than having to do "seq.add(blah)" it's a small thing, but it's really nice.
After 10 years of commercial experience in #cpp I think I’m ready for a new chapter. I have played around with #rust#golang#zig and #clojure but most job offers that I see are for people with at least X years of commercial experience in this exact languages. Do you have any hints how to approach this? I would think that my previous experience as a #software engineer would matter. Especially since I do not expect to move to another senior role, I’m checking junior positions too. #jobsearch
I’ve been using new shiny languages for a while now. #Rust, #Zig and #Swift in particular.
I love Rust’s tooling, Swift’s syntax, and Zig’s philosophy, but I feel like good old #Cpp is still the goat.
Yeah, the syntax can get out of hand really quickly.
Yeah, the STL is bloated.
Yeah, the tooling ecosystem is a mess.
But at the end of the day, with a good style guide and some discipline, it can check most of my boxes.
But learning new languages is always fun so I’m still doing it 😬
In another move[1] to stay up-to-date with latest version of Zig (v0.12.0), I've also updated all code (and .zig.zon depencency info) in the still-just-a-baby zig.thi.ng repo:
Just updated all https://thi.ng/wasm-api packages, bindgen, build scripts, readmes and examples to be compatible with the brand new Zig v0.12.0 released a couple of days ago... This includes adapting to breaking changes (esp. Zig's build system) and updating the hybrid Zig/WASM/TypeScript project template:
Found a small #Zig issue with EnumSet, so raised an issue yesterday with a fix PR. One round of PR feedback to fix a test, and it's merged. ⚡ 10/10 would PR again.
The #zig experiments continue, still very much liking it.
Dropping random C/C++ files in the build and having it just work is great.
Only minor issue I hit so far is missing syntax to make a slice from a single-item pointer (like slice::from_ref in Rust), but looks like this is getting fixed for 0.12 (https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/16075). And can work around in 0.11 with some comptime trickery.
i hope #zig will be sustainable. i like its way more than #rust. and like in C or even RISC-V microarchitecture, but not so much in Rust and C++, the language definition is compact enough so that it just stick into your head. also, comptime is really cool invention in my opinion. #C#rustlang#riscv
I must say, I really like the QOI image codec despite its shortcomings for coding efficiency and flexibility - it is dead simple, easy to implement, and super effective for what it is! I'd be happy in a world where we used QOI instead of PNG for a lot of stuff. And I've already fallen in love with Zig, which I think is very easy :)
To achieve a better sample size, I'd highly appreciate if you could circulate the link to this survey in your own networks.
It's already been almost 9 years since the last user survey for these projects. Please help me/us to get more insights into your own experiences, your interests, hopes and pain points — allowing the projects and everyone involved to move forward more intentionally.
There're 15 questions here, with ~10 of them marked as mandatory. The main focal points are the matrices in the middle of the survey. Please also do use the final freeform comments box to share any further feedback you might have. Thank you very much for your interest, trust & taking the time to provide some much needed answers! 🙏
The survey is anonymous and will remain open until 23:59 (CET) on February 29, 2024. I will then share a public summary of the results on my Mastodon in the days following (do keep an eye on the #ThingUmbrella hashtag)...
Started using @golang for simple command line tooling instead of Typescript. So far enjoying it very much, I think it’s bye bye to (cli/serverside) Typescript for me.
@yth@golang I know, I’m dreaming :) I don’t have experience with Go, never had but I was always fond of Ruby syntax and how gently it treats various data types and string operations. It was just not so robust to me regarding performance and infrastructure and I got curious about #crystallang trying to fix that, while inheriting baseline from #ruby. This is just POC to stay curious. i’m aware that #rust, #golang and even #elixir are more new wave,popular while #zig and #crystal have their niches
Un beau troll de BOFH lors d'une discussion sur le développement du langage de programmation #Zig. En réponse à une suggestion que davantage de gens donnent leur avis, le mainteneur répond "'If you don't have any open source project written in zig with 100+ commits, don't bother" https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/6025#issuecomment-1949254383
Tried to use it on my second 💻 today, to no avail and much grinding of teeth.
I'm not setting up any more #venv . I'm fed up. I'm bloody rewriting everything, even libraries in #perl so it works proper on #unix damn it. And maybe throw a look at some #zig porting while at it.