How Azure DevOps Helps Me Actually Finish My Personal Projects
When most developers start a personal project, there’s a pretty obvious first step: Create a GitHub repository. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. GitHub is fantastic, and I use it too. But for a lot of my personal projects —…
Why Making Stuff Is More Fun Than Buying Stuff
I love buying new stuff. New games, tech, Pokémon cards, gadgets — I’m definitely not going to pretend I don’t enjoy it. But I’ve realized something over the years: Making something is almost always more satisfying than buying…
Quitting Soda Was Harder Than I Expected
I recently decided to give up soda, and damn, I didn’t realize how hard that was going to be. Especially Mountain Dew. For years, I drank an awful lot of Mountain Dew. Sitting down at the computer, opening Visual Studio, and cracking open a cold…
Getting Started With Rust: Option, Result, and the ? Operator
Three things you’ll see constantly in Rust are Option, Result, and the ? operator. They give Rust a clean way to deal with missing values and errors. Option Option represents a value that might exist. It has two possibilities: For example: Or if…
Getting Started With Rust: Enums
Enums in Rust let you define a type that can be one of several possible values. They’re simple, useful, and something you’ll see constantly in Rust. Creating an Enum Let’s say a player can move in four directions: We can then create a…
Getting Started With Rust: Structs
As your Rust programs get larger, you’ll need better ways to organize related data. That’s where structs come in. A struct lets you group multiple pieces of related data together into your own custom type. Creating a Struct Let’s say…
Getting Started With Rust Programming
Rust is a fast, modern programming language focused on performance, reliability, and memory safety. It can have a bit of a learning curve, but getting your first Rust program running is surprisingly simple. This guide will take you from installing Rust…
How PSP Homebrew Got Me Into Programming
It’s kind of crazy to think about how one random interest can completely change the direction of your life. For me, one of those things was the PSP. I loved the PSP as a gaming system, but what really fascinated me wasn’t necessarily the…
Why I Usually Choose PostgreSQL for My Projects
When I start a new project that needs a database, I usually don’t spend a ton of time deciding which database I’m going to use. Most of the time, I just reach for PostgreSQL. It’s not because PostgreSQL is automatically the best…
I Really Want to Build a Raspberry Pi Micro Cluster
Do I need a cluster of Raspberry Pis sitting on my desk? No. Do I really fucking want one? Absolutely. I’ve always liked having my own hardware to experiment with. I already run servers, VMs, Docker containers, databases, and random services for…