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       Languages, intentionality & intent
       
       15 March, 2025
       
       QUOTE
       This post was translated from HTML, inevitably some things will have changed or no longer apply - July 2025
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       A bit more than a year ago I wrote about being more deliberate about my choices around the tools of my trade, the programming languages I used. At the time several issues featured for me, but in 2023 it was mostly a matter of countering proliferation.
       
       In the year since what using a particular language could be taken to mean, what I could be taken to support based on my use of it, because of what it represented, its intentionality if you like, became increasingly important to me. Many of the minor practical shortcomings of Rust became less important to me than the political connections of other languages' creators, corporate sponsors, & more prominent users.
       
       At the end of 2023 I wrote about the languages I used at the time, breaking them down by my use of them in scripts, on the server, & on the desktop.
       
 (DIR) I wrote
       QUOTE
       As 2023 drew to a close I had different scripts running in JavaScript, Python, Ruby, & TypeScript. Now they're all in Python except for Zine & some code I'll get to in the coming countdown.
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       This much hasn't changed. My scripts are all still written in Python. Updating things, generating keys, running particular build & deployment steps in sequences, anything where I have to do the same thing multiple times or would otherwise have to remember magic shell incantations. All scripted. All Python.
       
       Zine was my last Ruby script, & Zine moved to the desktop category when I rewrote it, first in Swift, then in Rust. Being compiled or having a UI being how in my mind I delineate scripting & the desktop.
       
       I've looked at but not really used Cargo Scripts, an idea I've seen come up before with both Swift & C#, but I never ended up finding much use for scripting in a compiled language with either of those, despite sinking lots of hours into it in both cases.
       
 (HTM) Cargo Scripts
       QUOTE
       I had server side code running in PHP, Ruby, & for a while there Rust & Swift too. Now it's all (going to be) Python & maybe Kotlin.
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       The server-side code went away. This site's static, it's all generated on my desktop & pushed out with rsync. There's nothing dynamic there -- ha, ha -- not even any JavaScript. I have plans to do some things in this space, but at the moment there's nothing. Python & maybe Rust would be my guess as to how that'll play out, maybe something like Elixir, but that's just guesswork. For now: Tabula rasa.
       
       QUOTE
       On the desktop I had C#, Rust, & Swift, & that's all moved to Kotlin now.
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       On the desktop Swift code made a come back & ended up outlasting Kotlin, but not by very long. Now it's all Rust, & I don't see that changing for a while. Of course in 2023 I didn't exactly predict this, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes.
       
       Python & Rust. For the moment at least on this Ides of March.