2024-12-25
A Santa's sack of site upgrades
A festive round-up of the improvements I've been making to How To Code It.
Merry Christmas, one and all. Except people who don't comment their code – may your turkey be dry and your in-laws slow to leave.
Santa has completed his annual feat of fearless concurrency, delivering presents to all the children of the world in the brief span of 24 hours. His festive defiance of GDPR (I found no way to opt out of cookies) is made no less impressive by his army of seasonal workers.
This Christmas, I come bearing my own gifts for How To Code It readers. But, lacking an elf taskforce and collecting too little personal data to locate your chimney, I'm obliged to deliver them digitally.
Behold how your stocking overflows with site improvements to enhance your learning in the year ahead!
Multi-part guides
How To Code It now renders multi-part guides in a much more compelling way, helping you structure your reading and get an intuitive outline of the content.
Isn't this a feature I should have launched with? Well, no one sets out to write 7,000 words on error handling and 12,000 words on hexagonal architecture – it just happens. When it does, you need a format to do it justice.
Improved code blocks
How To Code It's signature referenced code blocks have been decked out with language, crate and filepath details where relevant. Mobile readers will find that this seamlessly collapses to a filename on small screens (but honestly, why do that to yourself?).
You can also copy a code block with the click of a button! It even removes the references for you.
Version control
Sometimes, improbable though it may seem, I am wrong. As people of learning, How To Code It readers are quick to pounce on inaccuracies and hold me to the right standard.
Together, this community possesses a wealth of knowledge, examples and experience in Rust that exceeds the capacity of a single mind. When something comes along that I didn't know, or I'm shown a better way, I want to update my guides to reflect the state of the art.
More importantly, I want you to see where my thinking has changed, and what old advice no longer applies.
To that end, every guide is now version-controlled. You'll find a version number and a link to the commit that created it in the header.
Please continue to keep me honest.
Best wishes for 2025
Thank you for reading How To Code It in 2024.
Thank you doubly to everyone who's sent me messages of encouragement, joined the mailing list or taken part in the community discussion.
I'm overjoyed to have found a group of people who share my passion for Rust and a belief in better code. May the coming year bring you prosperity and comfort in Ferris' pincered embrace.
