The Perils of Productivity

After a busy and exhausting set of end semester exams, I got an extra day off before my final exam - German. I decided to be productive - and attempt something I had not before - write a compiler.

Writing a compiler is one of the most common projects that CSE students take, and I found writing assembly code fun this semester - so I thought, why not try writing my own compiler?

I booted up my Linux machine. Gathered the resources. Kept snacks at hand - and immediately got stuck.
The guide I was using (for writing a Python compiler in Python) required me to update my Python installation to Python 3.11 - no big deal. I did it, and started following the tutorial.
I finished writing the first part - a tokenizer - and now, began following the steps to test it....

Error after error kept popping up.

Looking back - I should have stopped here. But I did not - I went to everyone's favorite source of programming knowledge - ChatGPT - and began finding solutions.

After a couple hours, I was frustrated at my lack of progress and decided to do something else. Exiting the terminal, I tried to shut down the laptop.
It did not.
I tried opening the terminal again. It did not.

And then I forcibly powered the laptop down by long pressing the power button.

Upon booting up again - my desktop environment had bid me a fond farewell, leaving me with a TTY terminal for company.

To cut a long story short - I spent the rest of the day mounting pen drives to the filesystem and backing up my data, trying various methods of uninstalling, purging and reinstalling the DE, before giving up and installing a fresh distro.

Had I chosen not to be productive - I'd have saved myself an entire day of pain, and a few read cycles on my pendrives.

What is the moral here? When you get a day off, use that day to relax. Productivity can wait :D



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homesickness

     The summer is perhaps the time that all college students (myself included) look forward to all year. It is the time we go home, the time we can temporarily forget the challenges of academics and the rigors of college – and just be kids again. I get about a month for summer break, and it’s a month I waste in pursuit of happiness and a vague sense of having “accomplished” something – a truly enjoyable pursuit, and one I recommend everyone try out. This summer, I alternated between cooking my ageing GTX 1050 and cooking the clutch of Dad’s 20 year old Bajaj bike, interspersed by periods of cooking my other laptop’s RTX 3050Ti and chewing through the free trials offered by cloud providers. It was a heady mix of frustration, triumph and petrol – just the way I like it. One of the chores I have at home during vacations is to source milk for the day. I choose to do this by taking out our old Indica for a spin, heading to the second-closest supermarket, and picking out the m...
Read more

This is no Monkey Business

One of the most common complaints I have heard in my time as a hosteller has been - a monkey's gotten into my room! Well, at long last, my room too was honoured. A passing monkey deigned to visit my room. The monkey was gracious enough to enter via the (latched) window, and leave via the same window - even going as far as closing it while leaving. So polite! And, rather than inconvenience us by making a mess, it decided to instead leave us perplexed. The open packet of chips left behind by my roommate? Nah. My bottle of peanut butter? Nah. A random assortment of partially filled mineral water bottles (owned by my roommate)? I'll take your entire stock. My innocent bottle of nasal drops? Yes, please. My box of ink bottles, minding their own business? That'll look better on the bed. Monkey see, monkey do, yes. But human confused. 
Read more

Hello!

I still don't know what I'm getting myself into, but here we go. As the days pass me by in college, I find myself wanting to write things down, to journal and document the mundane aspects of life we often ignore. So - I have taken the completely original step of starting a blog! I do not know how often I write here - but I hope I write somewhat consistently. In any case, welcome to my ramblings. I hope I don't bore you. I do hope that I look back upon this in some years and feel nostalgic, and not awkward. (Again, totally original.)
Read more