From 880cfbeb74546056feab63ed6e92a10c0dbaf2c3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ashelyn Rose Date: Mon, 8 May 2023 02:17:40 -0600 Subject: New layout, uses nextjs --- posts/01_04_2023-advent-of-wasm.html | 123 ----------------------------------- 1 file changed, 123 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 posts/01_04_2023-advent-of-wasm.html (limited to 'posts/01_04_2023-advent-of-wasm.html') diff --git a/posts/01_04_2023-advent-of-wasm.html b/posts/01_04_2023-advent-of-wasm.html deleted file mode 100644 index 4f707a6..0000000 --- a/posts/01_04_2023-advent-of-wasm.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,123 +0,0 @@ - - - - Advent of Wasm - - - - - -

- Advent of Wasm - Now with 87% more pain -

- -

- 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. -

- -

So what was so hard about it?

- -

- 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. -

- -

Tips if you want to get into writing wasm by hand?

- -

- 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. -

- - - - -- cgit 1.4.1