My 2024
2025/Jan 01
When I initially went to write this post, I was of the assumption that I wouldn’t have much to write about; I though I had not done much this year. It was not until I took another look at this blog to realize how mistaken I was. I posted twice as many entries to this blog in 2024 than I have in previous years.
Where at this point in 2023 I had only recently begun to pick up programming again, I’ve now spent an entire year truly mastering the subtle aspects of Lua. After first picking it up for game development — an endeavour which has yet to see the light of day — I then pivoted to trying to use it to develop GUI applications for GNOME, the most popular desktop environment for Linux machines. That effort has crystallized into two applications, one of which is currently available for download.
The way I ended up developing these GNOME apps is very different from GNOME’s own recommendations. I could not wrap my head around this development style no matter how hard I tried, so I made my own path. To help others achieve what I did, I wrote a comprehensive guide to writing GNOME apps in Lua. This guide currently shows up in the first page of search engine results for the query “lua gnome”, and I’m thrilled that others who may seek to take this path will have this information available. Figuring all of it out in the first place was real challenge.
Though it was in 2023 where I discovered my celiac disease and began treatment through a gluten free diet, it was only in May of this year that I began to truly see recovery as I’d started a new cross-contamination protocol which would prevent my spouse from glutening me. The results have been nothing short of miraculous, entirely eliminating pain which had previously limited my ability to type text on a computer keyboard, on top of just generally giving my body the ability to function better than it ever has. It continues to astound me that such a small dietary change has made me healthier than I’ve ever been.
My main creative focus this year has been a text editor which I started with the goal of making it easier for me to stay on task when writing code. The conventional approach to writing text editors has been to make it easier for the user to write more (either code or prose). I find this to be a counterproductive goal as the features which are usually developed to achieve this end have a tendency to distract me or worse, make it so easy to write that I end up not giving much thought to what I’m writing. For prose, the resulting text isn’t succint. For code, the resulting source becomes too difficult to understand and later amend. I think quantity is the wrong measure of success here, and so any tool which achieves quantity while also making it more difficult to reach an acceptable level of quality is a tool which must ultimately stands in the user’s way.
Rapid iteration is a great methodology for R&Ding prototypes, but when it comes to building a finished product you’ve got to be able to hunker down and get the details just right. I’ll continue failing fast in the background. When I reach a point where I’ve failed enough to feel certain that I’ve found a good idea, I’ll start polishing it to the condition it deserves. Once things are ready, I’ll share them here.