+ So the last few years I have done Advent of Code off and on. Sometimes + I have tried to learn a new language, other times I was just trying to + beat my dad each evening. This year though, this year I don't know what + I was thinking. +
+ ++ It was several weeks after everyone else had started, I had largely written + it off for the year - I was not up for it. Until a terrible idea crossed + my mind. +
+ ++ Like an intrusive thought, my mind asked: "Well you've been wanting to do + something in web assembly for a while right? How bad could it be?" +
+ ++ Turns out I was definitely not ready for this. +
+ ++ More than anything else, I forgot how much you need to do by hand to do + any sort of assembly. The first day saw me spending several hours just + on some loader code to pass the puzzle input in from JS, call a wasm + function, and then read back the result. +
+ ++ Next was a few functions for reading numbers out of the wasm memory buffer, + parsing them from ascii, etc. The core read loop was not too tricky, but + the bit that took far longer than it had any reason to was converting my + answer back to ascii and shoving it into an output area. +
+ ++ Really none of it was surprising, and none of it *should* + have been that hard ... it's just been a while since this Javascript girl + has written truly low-level code. +
+ ++ To make matters worse I got hard-core distracted by the non-wasm part of + my wasm project. After the first day I returned to my stub JS loader and + expanded it into a little wasm explorer. +
+ ++ I added a code view, syntax highlighting, auto-loaded my puzzle inputs, + even made a janky little dynamic list that would automatically pick up + new days' solutions as I added them to the repo without needing me to + touch the loader page each day. +
+ ++ In the end I'm really quite proud of it, I will absolutely be reusing + this setup for future years, and you should + check it out + if you haven't already ... but for wanting to challenge myself with + something new I was doing a lot of the same-old. +
+ ++ Ultimately I got through 3 days before giving up jusst because every + step along the way involved *so much* extra + code. I may come back to some of the puzzles later, but for now I'm + kind of happy with what I did, and I don't feel like I need to prove + myself by doing more. I was doing it for fun, and so I stopped when + it stopped being fun. +
+ ++ Uhh ... maybe consider don't? +
+ ++ Jokes aside: do a throwaway project or two so you get used to passing + data into and out of wasm, whatever parsing you're going to do, etc. +
+ ++ Do everything in your power to make sure you can focus on the actual + wasm part of your project, because (at least if you're anything like + me) it's easy to get sidetracked with all that. +
+ ++ With that said: I had fun. Doing new things is always a treat, so if + you're looking for something new to try definitely consider giving + webassembly a look. +
+ + + diff --git a/posts/index.html b/posts/index.html index 13bb767..b86c5a5 100644 --- a/posts/index.html +++ b/posts/index.html @@ -14,17 +14,24 @@