Testing, 123.
I've had this site up for a while but until now its only contents have been some notes from some edX courses I've taken and my progress through SICP. If anyone has stumbled across it (I have no analytics set up so I have no idea if anyone is out there right now), it probably hasn't been very illuminating.
I'm adding this inagural post to serve as an introduction to the site that can be a little more scrutable, and because I'd like to maybe blog a bit here in a semi-public way and some post needs to be the first one.
So, hello. This site mostly represents my identity as a software developer. I'm trying to avoid directly tying it to my IRL identity, but I'm not trying very hard.
The site is pure HTML generated by a completely custom static site generator I've been building out as needed. It started as just writing HTML directly with no generation step, and has slowly gained the ability to render markdown to HTML, use page templates, render partials within a page, replace template tags, generate breadcrumb navigation, and perform syntax highlighting for scheme code. I've written everything without external libraries, and the code isn't always the prettiest or most robust (markdown parsing in particular), but it's all mine and it's getting the job done. I hope to open the source at some point.
Probably of most interest to anyone stumbling across the site are my Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming notes and solutions. The notes started out as just me trying to solve an exercise from the book a day and recording my solution, but have kind of morphed into a more self-indulgent re-presentation of the book and a way to flex the features of my site generator. Lately tinkering with the presentation has overtaken my slow progress through the exercises. You'll find more correct and complete solutions to SICP elsewhere, but at least mine look pretty.
In general, most of the things here are likely of limited value to anyone but me. The reason to put them online is that I've heard a lot about the benefits of doing things in a semi-public fashion or "building with the garage door open". And so far it seems to be working, at least a bit. I've tried to start SICP 2 or 3 times over the years, and this is the first time I've stuck with it more than the first few pages. And just knowing that my course notes might be viewed by others is enough to spur me to put a bit more effort in, which I'm grateful for when I review them.
So even if there's not much here for anyone else right now, I'm hopeful that the practice of learning and building in an open way will help make me a better developer, and at some point I'll have some something to post here that has real value to others.
If you want to get in touch about something on the site, email me at aphid at this domain.