Things I want to accomplish in 2023:

- learn rust
- learn a functional programming language (elixir probably)
- finish the O'Reilly book about microservices
- learn and contribute to gnunet
- read at least other 2 books about SE

Regarding the last point, I've always underestimated SE books.

I have heard praises for Peter Van Roy's book "Concepts techniques and models of computer programming - MIT Press". Too bad, I couldn't find it on any offline shop in my city.

Not strictly SE and perhaps a little ancient, but I enjoyed The Phoenix Project. Actually, the main character makes pointed remarks about devs on multiple occasions. Shows you how “they” (other IT folks) see us ;)

May I know what does SE stand for ?

@sam94 software engineer(ing)

First two is me last year

@aviophile how did it go?

I’m on the Elixir train as well! On the general, learning is ongoing all the time. So far this year I’ve learned Lua and finished two SE books, and I plan to keep up a book per week average cadence, if I can (of course there are books that are too big to read in a week, but that’s beside the point). However, focus during this spring is Elixir, offensive security and graphics programming, with a bit of distributed systems understanding and RISC-V deep-dive mixed in. Fun times ahead!

@dmonkey elixir is basically nonengineer language

@aviophile care to elaborate?

@100110111 syntax is heavily overladed and sometimes misleading. Everything good about it comes from Erlang. Functional programming itself is also a limiting concept with no clear benefits. Immutable data: can do it with rust, no side effects: we WANT side effects.

@aviophile I do agree that most of the good stuff comes from Erlang. However I disagree with you when it comes to the benefits of FP and side effects: if one has the need for side effects, Elixir may not be the right tool for the job. Personally, I’m a big proponent of FP, immutable data and avoiding side effects. Many a time requiring data to the mutable and relying on side effects is a design flaw. That being said, sometimes you need them. In that case, Elixir isn’t the right tool for the job. But that does not make it a nonengineer language, at least in the way I could possibly understand what is meant by it, although I don’t really get what you mean by the term, or why even have such a term in the first place.

@100110111 it smells like someone’s pet project: it is. Guy who mainly created the language comes from Ruby background I assume and pretty young. It shows, from the design decisions.
One struct definition per file, pattern matching in functions(you need to write all of them back to back, like if-else order 🤦). He tried soooo hard to reduce line of code number and come up with a unique language that it is almost comical. I won’t even talk about advertised pipeline chaining being better way of writing code.

Elixir minus erlang is basically bunch of immature dedign decisions.

@aviophile if what you say holds up, I would agree. I withold my judgement before I’ve seen for myself. There must be a reason why some like it so much, and I intend to find out what that is.

@100110111 why 1.7% percent of whole loves too much you mean. Niche languages have that fanatic base.

@aviophile it may be a small and vocal community, I guess. Nonetheless, I would like to go judge for myself. Thanks for your input, though. You’re the first one in my recollection that’s said anything not good about the language, and I’ll keep those things in mind when diving into the language. As a hobbyist PLDev I like to go explore languages and take the good stuff with me as well as the learnings from whatever sucked.