WebAssembly
Following up on the 'watch this space' declaration in last week's post, I created a Github repo on minimal examples to compile and run WebAssembly. It's designed to help consider different options - whether it be Rust or .wat as a starting point, whether to run in the browser or with an independent runtime, whether to extend with Rust-JavaScript interoperability or even go full stack Rust.
In summary, a starting point to those new to WebAssembly to construct a mental model and build on top of.
Learning WebAssembly, I've gone down the path of reading up more on how the browser works. I had actually mentioned wanting to review this in my first week of RC. This time, however, feels a lot more engaging. There's a lot more concepts to make connections with. Most importantly it feels more fun this way; it's not something looked into simply to solve a problem.
Python
Vinayak recommended a PyCon talk by Russell Keith-Magee at our coffee chat last week. I had the chance to watch this talk over the weekend. The talk was illuminating.
First, in thinking about the future of Python, one needs to think about black swan events. A black swan event is an event that is a surprise to the observer with a major effect on the world, but can be easily in explained in hindsight. This being the case, the best way to avoid being on the wrong side of a black swan event is to actively challenge one's own assumptions. The example he used was America's Cup; adhering to this principle has injected innovation into the sailing competition, breathing new life and excitement for many years to come.
Next was the framing of WebAssembly as Python's (or for that matter, all programming language's) black swan. WebAssembly started life as a research project to identify the set of primitive JavaScript operations that will execute in modern browser engines. The result of this work is the ability to run languages other than JavaScript in the browser, and do so in a fast and secure way. He's essentially throwing down the gauntlet, galvanizing the community to embrace this new paradigm instead of simply continuing to do what Python is good at. In this regard, perhaps be more like... the Rust community?
The final point that hit home was Keith-Magee's experience of burnout as a maintainer in the open source community. It's very disheartening to hear some members he had to deal with, who receive a product at no cost but somehow feel a strong sense of entitlement. I felt a renewed sense of appreciation for the open source community, and a continued desire to contribute.
It turned out the talk Vinayak recommended was the talk at PyCon AU 2019! This was also very good, and is more practical re: Python and WebAssembly. The talk covers a bit of history of WebAssembly, tools to help compile Python to WebAssembly, and the future for Python on the web. In a previous post I described how WebAssembly reminded me of Java, it's curious hearing Keith-Magee describe how "wasm has delivered on the promise Java made".
OK one last note about previous posts - I mentioned how some open source projects may need a bit of hand holding. Keith-Magee's current project is called BeeWare and has a spectacular first-time contributors page.
Content: Climbing to the top
OK. Today I'm not just overloading with previous posts but also with content. Things are slowly coming together. I'm reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet.
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
I'm reminded of Steve Job's Stanford commencement speech on how you can't connect the dots moving forward, you can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future.
That being said, I've only just gotten started. I'm reminded of Terence Tao who, despite all his achievements, speaks modestly of the journey still to come.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucla-math-prize-20140626-story.html
You want to get to the top of the cliff. But that’s not what you focus on immediately. You focus on the next ledge just beyond your reach, because you need to do one clever thing to get up there. And then once you get there, you do it again. A lot of this is rather boring and not very glamorous. But you can’t jump cliffs in a single bound.