Getting started working on an unknown repository can be daunting. Getting all the tools, setting up your environment, running the tests, building the artifact, deploying the new version of the software… All those can take a lot of time and back and forth with other colleagues who are used to working there (hopefully they're still working in your company) just so that you can get started working. If you're lucky, you will find scripts for those actions. You might only find an example of an arcane command in the README that has not been updated in the last 2 years. Or you might not encounter any indication of the direction in which to go.

For the last few years, I've been trying to find a topic to actually work on to develop a side project. I had quite a few ideas, but always got stuck on the "find people and understand their needs part", because I did not know people in the domain to talk to, nor could I find those people online. You need a way to get people to discover you. If you don't produce anything, they will not ask any questions that can guide you towards what they need.

When you create a long running application in Rust, you have to recompile your files everytime you make a change. The first way is to just run cargo run and Ctrl-C the process then run it again when you want to reload. A better way is to install cargo-watch, which will do this process automatically when you change a file in your project. You just need to run it with

Getting back into Rust, I want to start documenting my journey to getting a small service running. The first "problem" I had to solve was to add dependencies to the project. The official method is to add the dependencies manually in your Cargo.toml file. However, this is not convenient, and could lead to errors quite easily. Thankfully, you can make this easier using cargo-edit. This will let you add, remove, upgrade dependencies or set-version of your crate.

I’ve been using nm-applet in i3 to manage my networks, and it works pretty well. However, I don’t really like the icons it comes with in my systray, so I decided to try my hand at creating a little helper to get rid of it and manage my networks in an other way. Basically, I want to be able to connet to a wifi from the list of available ones. This article is based on ArchLinux, assumes that you are using NetworkManager and that you have rofi installed.

Working on i3, you have to define a lot of functionalities yourself, or install the program that does it for you. One of those functionalities is to be alerted in case of a low battery. Let’s explore two options, the very simple and the very customizable, so that you can choose what fits you best. You’ll learn more about linux going the custom route, but it will take longer to get running.

I started working on quite a few different projects in the past, whether in my personal or professional life, and the beginning often felt overwhelming. I did not know enough, or did not have a specific enough idea. There were too many moving parts. Pick your poison. I noticed over the years that this feeling came from taking on too much at once. When you don’t even know where to start, and think about too many things at once, your brain just stops.

I just finished following a quick tutorial about TailwindCSS, you can find it here. My first impressions are really good, but let’s go in details about what I liked, a few questions and some extra resources. What I liked most: Easy to get started (with a caveat) 🔗Getting started with TailwindCSS, once you understand the concept, is very easy. Just add a few classes to your HTML, and you get desired styling. The classes are clear in what they achieve, you get sane defaults and pairing colors out of the box. Fantastic for someone with basically no experience, as these can be overwhelming to define when getting started.

For this new tool I’m working on, Startyk, there are a few features that I would love to use on my blog. I want this tool to be helpful to writers to understand their audience better, get discovered more easily, and for readers to have a filter, so that they don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of resources out there. And I want it to integrate in the writer’s platform. They should be the owners of their content, not a third party. While the extra functionalities will live somewhere else, I pledge that the data will all be available to the user for as long as possible for me, possibly forever even if the platform were to close down.

Trying to create a successful business is something tough. For me, the toughest thing is to feel adequate that I am qualified to do it. I mean, there are so many people doing it out there, and when I, almost inevitably, stumble upon something with the same functionality than what I want to create, I get discouraged because I feel like I don’t have any legitimacy to do it anymore.