hacking log

I have been quite busy on all fronts lately, so I didn't have much time to update the blog. What has been keeping me busy is a good amount of hacking / learning:

1. At work I will be in charge of a serious embedded programming project. For this purpose, I have to learn Ada 95, which is what I'm now doing, among other things. On one hand Ada is similar enough to other imperative programming languages like C, and has a very familiar syntax from VHDL. On the other hand, it's a large, complex language that appears to be challenging to master.
2. I'm doing some SICP reading lately. It's a pleasure, and I'm liking it more and more - I think it is close to becoming my favorite book on programming. In parallel, I began watching the SICP lectures which are available free online. I think that hearing the lectures and reading the book in parallel will consolidate my knowledge on the subject. When I finish with the lectures, I want to do some project from the course in order to practice (all the course material is available from the MIT OCW website).
3. Last but not least, I'm still working on the rewrite of my ESMS program, in Ruby. The rewrite is progressing very slowly, much slower than I expected. This is mainly because I'm only doing it on weekends so I tend to procrastinate a lot, and because I'm trying to study Ruby deeply as I go. So for any little thing I need done I research the methods and try to find the best way. I think that this is a good experience overall, as I now feel that I understand Ruby, and OOP in general, much better than I did before.