I still don't know. Been reading. Been disorganized lately. Still learning, sort of directed learning, but mostly still random at this point.
Finished one book on Python. OK.
Finished one book on Nim. OK too. Like Python but compiled and exceedingly fast and strikes me as seeming to make more sense as a programming language, though it's not fully-fleshed. But a real possibility.
Finished reading about Go. Sounds OK too, if you like that sort of thing. Like C but smarter. More modern. But still like C. When do we get off the C-Train? All the elegance of assembly language and all the charm of a bowl of alphabet soup without the hot water. I've pretty much had enough of that world.
Am reading Niklaus Wirth's long essay on programming from a few years back, which is essentially an explanation of Oberon. I've always felt attuned to the way Wirth thinks, and Oberon always sounded good, better than Modula-2, which was better than Pascal, but as with the rest of Wirth's work, it's an idea that no one ever wanted to pay attention to. A true shame, is what I think. Still, it's at least a good read about a world that might have been.
Am currently reading "Learn You A Haskell For Great Good". Also interesting. May try this, or else Nim, or both. Haskell is stable, complete, last version released in 2010. That's a feature, not a lack — it's done. No doubt some minor tuning will come along, but no one is out there swearing, trying to pull off major chunks of it and replace them with "Well, let's see if this damn thing works then" parts.
Anyway, I have choices.
Just finished going through "The Org Manual" and taking notes. Nuts. Crazy nuts. Wildly complex when my intention is that since I use Emacs, and am getting better at Org-Mode, and like it for a whole bunch of things, that maybe I should stick to it for generating project plans and documentation while I re-learn programming, and "computer science" in my waning days.
But Org-Mode for publishing complex documents or entire web sites is nasty-looking, and still very clunky and confusingly complex for just pooping out single-page HTML documents but we'll see. Maybe. Since I already use Emacs every day.
Sphinx is up next. Just about every system these days, at least Linux systems, has Python installed, and it gets continually updated, and Sphinx relies on Python, and Sphinx uses a Markdown variant called RestructuretText, and all of that is modern and current and universal, so then Sphinx may be the way to go.
Can't tell yet. Still learning how to format and export and style Org-Mode, which will take another week or two, at my pace these days, and I could end up using both systems in the end, Org-Mode for smaller, less formal things, and Sphinx for bigger, more formal things, like I'd do on a job if I ever had a job again.
Anyway, I want to create personal tutorials for both methods. Get it all figured out, document it, have it ready to go without re-learning anything, just look up my personal tutorials, and use whichever system seems right in the moment.
Then I'll move on to re-learning programming, decide on an environment, and do some stuff. Not a bad life. Not bad.
Have anything to add? Then email sosayseff+noseyjoe@gmail.com
Me? Still fizzy.