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+# The System
+
+I've been stuck in analysis paralysis for literally years about choosing a systems programming
+language.
+
+I've always wanted to write code for computers. But I've never really worked with a language
+that's compiled to run natively, except for a bit of C++ in an old job, but that was so tied up
+in a Visual Studio behemoth I felt completely distanced from the machine.
+
+I made an attempt to learn Zig via the ziglings: https://git.adamu.jp/adam/ziglings.
+I even flew to Italy and attended the Software You Can Love conference 2022.
+But then got stuck once I actually tried to write anything due to memory management. I want to
+give it another go.
+
+But I'm also torn on whether I should learn Rust instead. Zig *feels* like the right choice:
+simplicity, not run by a megacorp, no weird governance issues, etc., however I can't stop myself
+from thinking things like "but so many people use Go, maybe I should just use it", or
+"life's too short to manually manage memory, maybe Rust's borrow checker is the answer", etc.
+
+Anyway, rather than be constantly stuck in indecision, I decided to try a
+simple project in each of Zig, Rust, and Go, to get a feel for each one. I will start very simple,
+then add a couple of layers of complexity to get a feel for how code organization works. It's not
+an ideal plan, because I'll be judging as a beginner and will have likely made a bunch of newbie
+errors or followed some anti-patterns, but at least it'll give me concrete experience in order to
+make a more informed decision for which one to commit to learning more fully.
+
+## Initial App
+
+It's dull, but I'll make a simple CLI calculator.
+
+It should be able to parse an input and perform the four basic operators:: `+`, `-`, `*`, `/`,
+printing the result to the console.
+
+## Bigger App
+
+Once the calculator is done, I might have made a decision or decided to drop some candidates.
+If there is still some indecision, I will also implement a mini Mastodon CLI. I'm probably
+not going to implement ActivityPub, but more just use the Mastodon API. This will give me a taste
+for making HTTP request and a bit of networking.
+
+There should be two commands:
+* toot - send a toot
+* feed - show the first few toots of my feed
+
+Instance URL and auth tokens etc. can be handled via environment variables.
+
+## Final challenge
+
+NIFs for an Elixir library.
+
+I like Elixir, I've been using it as a hobby since ~2016 and professionally since 2021.
+I've always been curious about native bindings, so as a final challenge I would like to make
+some kind of Elixir library that uses NIFs built using these languages.
+
+# Progress
+
+Space for notes and thoughts as I progress.