Simply Imagined

A few years ago I ran across a video on YouTube about the Evolution of the Alphabet. Every now and then I remember it and spend some time amazed at how we got the alphabet we all take for granted.

This is the story of a bug I never saw coming, which manifested in a code path I never imagined or planned for. Certainly, good testing would have shown this earlier, but I don’t have test coverage of this module. I wanted to but I still have more to learn, and that’s a lesson for a future time.

Them: “Hey, what time is it?”
Me: “Let me check this clock. Hmm, let’s see… that plus that plus 4…”
Them: “Just glance at the clock and tell me.”
Me: “Ok, just a second, the digits changed, let me redo this.”
Them: “Seriously, how hard can this… Oh.”

After deciding to do a clone of what is perhaps the most popular word game, I realized that never having played it could be a liability. I’d heard descriptions, seen everyone post their score pictures to Twitter, and read up on strategy. I’ve yet to even open the website. Let’s get started!

This year I was able to attend Gig City Elixir in Chattanooga, TN. I had been searching for Elixir meetups near me when I ran across this conference and realized it was happening just two hours down the road and only two weeks away. I was quite nervous booking a ticket, as I was just learning the language while reading through books, but I’m so glad I went.

A few years ago I had read about Elixir but didn’t get very far. This year I was determined to take another look. I had seen a bit on LiveView on YouTube and decided that’s where I wanted to start. At Prag Prog I found Programming Phoenix LiveView by Bruce Tate and Sophie DeBenedetto. It’s still in beta, but I’ve always had good experiences with Prag Prog books.

Previously, I’ve dicussed my experiences and that I’ve been exposed to a lot of different languages and development environments. When I ran across Seven Languages in Seven Weeks I was intrigued by functional programming. I’d never seen anything like it. Somewhere after this I heard about Elixir and ended up buying Programming Elixir.

I have been fortunate to experience changes from the very first home computers to our handheld pocket marvels today. I began with a 300 baud modem, thought 1200 baud single duplex was amazing, and now multi-gigabit ethernet. I began on an Apple ][ and have used PCs, mainframes, Sparc stations, embedded systems, and now phones and the web. I have written games, a stadium card-stunt generator, embedded scientific instruments, medical devices, factory assembly line software, multi-platform hardware configuration UI, iPhone apps, and now web apps.