Surprises with Rust's `as` (and Python division)

14 min read July 08, 2024 #rust #python #programming

I've updated this post to clarify some parts and add some more context and examples. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on earlier versions!

Coming to Rust mostly from higher-level languages, I've experienced surprising behavior when using as for type casting, and started to avoid it where I could.

In this post, I give quite a bit of background information, which I hope explains §why someone might want to use asin the first place, §why I recommend for newcomers to Rust not to use as, and what I prefer to use to convert between types instead. If you want to skip that background and go straight to the point, press §here.

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Starting a batch at the Recurse Center

9 min read July 01, 2024 #rc #programming

Today is the first day of my 12-week batch at the Recurse Center! As I mentioned in my first post, one reason I wanted to restart my blog was to share my experience as I go through my batch. I am doing this in part to help keep myself accountable, and in part to offer a window into my time at RC for people I've told about it and who were curious.

What follows is some background on why I chose to attend RC (and why now), as well as a semi-structured list of things I want to learn or work on, things I'm hopeful about and excited for, and anxieties I want to work through.

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Hello, world (again)!

6 min read June 28, 2024 #misc #personal

Growing up in that — in retrospect, relatively brief — period of time when the Internet had already become popular, but social media platforms had not yet taken over, I had made multiple attempts to host a standalone blog.

The first was when I was, I don't know, 11? 12? I bought a domain (no idea with what money) matching the then really cool username I had on various forums, set up hosting (also no idea with what money), and installed WordPress. I don't know what I blogged about in that first iteration, because that website (and its really cool domain name) is long-lost to the digital abyss. I don't think I posted very much, though, and probably lost interest pretty quickly. The idea of having my own website and a blog was cooler than actually running them.

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