path: root/2023/info/cubing-after.md

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<a name="cubing-mainVideo-transcript"></a>
# Transcript


Introduction

[[!template new="1" text="""Hello, everyone, and welcome to Speedcubing in Emacs.""" start="00:00:00.000" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""First of all, a little bit about myself.""" start="00:00:08.360" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""My name is Vasilij Schneidermann. Online, I go by wasamasa.""" start="00:00:10.120" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm 31 years old. I work in information security,""" start="00:00:13.680" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and I do consulting and hacking""" start="00:00:18.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and stuff like figuring out""" start="00:00:20.480" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""how to break into other people's computers""" start="00:00:22.480" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and how to secure their systems basically.""" start="00:00:25.280" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""You can reach me by email.""" start="00:00:29.360" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I do have a self-hosted code repository thingy going on.""" start="00:00:31.440" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I have a blog, and you can find me""" start="00:00:36.640" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""in some other places online, like IRC for example.""" start="00:00:40.400" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So about the talk itself,""" start="00:00:45.920" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I used to be into the Rubik's cube when I was in school.""" start="00:00:48.680" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I forgot about it, though,""" start="00:00:52.840" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because these cubes were not very good.""" start="00:00:54.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Recently I did find some cheap looking cube at a shop.""" start="00:00:56.280" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Did not pay terribly much for it.""" start="00:01:02.280" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It was so, so much better than my old cube,""" start="00:01:04.120" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""it was unreal.""" start="00:01:07.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This motivated me to get back into""" start="00:01:08.640" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""this really weird kind of hobby.""" start="00:01:11.480" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For this, you need to be good at producing""" start="00:01:13.560" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""a truly random scramble""" start="00:01:18.000" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and timing your attempts to get any better at it.""" start="00:01:19.400" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""There is, of course, existing software""" start="00:01:22.320" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to do the scrambling for you and the recording""" start="00:01:23.720" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and the timekeeping and such,""" start="00:01:26.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but all the good options seem to be either web or mobile,""" start="00:01:28.080" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""for example the cstimer software""" start="00:01:31.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""or the twisty-timer app on Android.""" start="00:01:33.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Cubing in Emacs

[[!template new="1" text="""To my surprise, I did not find a single decent option""" start="00:01:35.400" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""inside Emacs, so this is basically a case study""" start="00:01:39.320" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""how to do better. For this, I wanted to make use of""" start="00:01:41.960" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""all the cool new Emacs features that appeared,""" start="00:01:45.000" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""like the SVG library; Transient,""" start="00:01:47.800" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""the library used for the Magit-style interfaces;""" start="00:01:50.880" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and the recently added sqlite-mode.""" start="00:01:53.600" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And most importantly it was about having fun.""" start="00:01:56.440" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Prior art

[[!template new="1" text="""So here's a full list of prior art,""" start="00:02:01.160" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I will not go into detail about this,""" start="00:02:02.760" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but basically we have things solving""" start="00:02:04.280" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""very different parts of this,""" start="00:02:06.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but not all of it. For example: we have several,""" start="00:02:08.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""we have a timer. We have several solvers.""" start="00:02:10.760" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We have some scramblers.""" start="00:02:14.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We have some whole-cube simulators, including a 3D one.""" start="00:02:16.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We have something for making it easier""" start="00:02:19.360" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to enter your algorithms in the notation.""" start="00:02:20.760" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But nothing that does all of those things in one package,""" start="00:02:23.120" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""which kind of surprised me.""" start="00:02:25.920" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So I present the `wca-prep` package.""" start="00:02:28.120" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

The name

[[!template new="1" text="""So the name, I found it difficult""" start="00:02:32.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to come up with a good name and so I looked""" start="00:02:35.560" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and I saw, well there's this World Cube Association""" start="00:02:39.960" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that holds these competitions where you compete.""" start="00:02:42.560" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""They do this for the Rubik's cube""" start="00:02:46.040" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but also a few others,""" start="00:02:47.760" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""so there's like a standardized list""" start="00:02:48.920" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""of events they have for this.""" start="00:02:50.800" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""There is a standard notation for this""" start="00:02:52.640" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and rules and everything.""" start="00:02:55.160" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And the goal of my package is basically""" start="00:02:56.520" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to help prepare myself for such a competition""" start="00:02:58.200" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and in fact a week ago I went to my first one""" start="00:03:01.280" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""which was wild, but pretty cool.""" start="00:03:03.680" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So for this reason I chose this name wca-prep,""" start="00:03:06.720" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because it helps me prepare for this kind of competition""" start="00:03:10.920" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and this limited the scope significantly,""" start="00:03:13.640" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

What's in wca-prep

[[!template new="1" text="""I have a scrambler, visualization of the scramble,""" start="00:03:16.520" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""timer, and statistics.""" start="00:03:19.000" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I excluded pretty much everything else I've seen.""" start="00:03:23.320" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For this reason, I only tried to focus on""" start="00:03:25.560" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""some very basic puzzles I can solve comfortably,""" start="00:03:28.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and did not want to do anything else""" start="00:03:32.200" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that may complicate things significantly.""" start="00:03:34.840" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""No other kinds of puzzles, no simulation, no solving,""" start="00:03:36.440" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""no exotic events, and no specialized scrambles""" start="00:03:40.480" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that are only good for practicing specific algorithms.""" start="00:03:43.920" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Demo

[[!template new="1" text="""So at this point the organizer should hopefully show""" start="00:03:49.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""a small video I've prepared, a one minute video showing how""" start="00:03:54.200" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I actually use this to solve a cube and to time my solve.""" start="00:03:58.000" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Challenges: Representing the cube

[[!template text="""Okay, so building this thing, there were several challenges.""" start="00:05:15.240" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template new="1" text="""The first one was how do I even represent""" start="00:05:18.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""the state of a Rubik's cube.""" start="00:05:20.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For this there are many possible representations,""" start="00:05:22.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""no obvious best solution.""" start="00:05:25.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I did not, well, what helped me was that""" start="00:05:27.709" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I did not have to programmatically solve this thing,""" start="00:05:29.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""so I picked the easiest possible representation""" start="00:05:31.989" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""which is just an array of every single facelet.""" start="00:05:35.189" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For a 3x3 cube you have 9 facelets on one side,""" start="00:05:38.269" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""so times 6 sides you would have 54 elements in this array.""" start="00:05:42.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So with this representation, it's very simple,""" start="00:05:47.269" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but it's kind of weird to do scrambles with this.""" start="00:05:49.709" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But otherwise, it worked very, very well.""" start="00:05:52.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""In the future, I plan to learn some group theory,""" start="00:05:54.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""pick a better representation""" start="00:05:57.269" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and do this in a much, much more elegant way""" start="00:05:58.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""without compromising speed too much.""" start="00:06:01.189" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Yes. Once I had the representation,""" start="00:06:07.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""the scrambling itself should not be too hard.""" start="00:06:10.709" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For this, it's important to consider that basically""" start="00:06:13.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""if you do a face turn""" start="00:06:17.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""you end up swapping some facelets with other facelets,""" start="00:06:19.149" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that's the easiest way to think about this.""" start="00:06:22.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""To determine which one goes into which one's position,""" start="00:06:26.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""it was pretty confusing to figure this out.""" start="00:06:29.269" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For this I went through a few papers,""" start="00:06:32.471" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and I found one which suggested""" start="00:06:34.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to just build a cube out of paper,""" start="00:06:36.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""number every facelet, and turn it""" start="00:06:37.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and keep track of which facelet moved into which position.""" start="00:06:40.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And programmatically, the `cl-rotatef` macro""" start="00:06:44.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""was very, very useful for doing this kind of""" start="00:06:47.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""in-place swapping you need for this operation.""" start="00:06:49.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So in the future, group theory would hopefully""" start="00:06:51.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""make this a bit less awkward.""" start="00:06:54.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Here's a photo of this paper cube I made""" start="00:06:57.989" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""along with a real cube. As you can see""" start="00:07:00.109" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""mathematically speaking, they are the same thing,""" start="00:07:03.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""they just look very, very different.""" start="00:07:07.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Scrambling

[[!template new="1" text="""So the scramble algorithm itself,""" start="00:07:09.269" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I pondered how this would even be done. In the competitions,""" start="00:07:14.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""They do this in a very, very elaborate way.""" start="00:07:19.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""They generate a random cube,""" start="00:07:21.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""they try to solve it, and if it's solvable""" start="00:07:22.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""they use these solution moves""" start="00:07:25.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to turn into a scramble basically.""" start="00:07:28.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And they also make sure to canonicalize the moves,""" start="00:07:30.829" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""so if you have subsequent moves that can be simplified,""" start="00:07:34.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""they do simplify these as much as possible.""" start="00:07:38.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For example,""" start="00:07:40.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""if you have two subsequent rotations in one direction,""" start="00:07:41.229" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""it's turned into a different kind of rotation,""" start="00:07:43.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""so 90 and 90 equals 180.""" start="00:07:46.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And the other Elisp scramblers I looked at,""" start="00:07:49.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""they generate random moves.""" start="00:07:53.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Some of them do canonicalize. Not all of them.""" start="00:07:55.109" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This one tries to do the best low-fi thing,""" start="00:07:57.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that is, generating random moves,""" start="00:08:00.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""canonicalizing and repeating""" start="00:08:02.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""until enough have been generated.""" start="00:08:04.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Visualization

[[!template new="1" text="""For the visualization I had to figure out""" start="00:08:09.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""something else too complicated.""" start="00:08:13.149" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For this, I tried to figure out""" start="00:08:14.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""where every facelift would end up in the puzzle view""" start="00:08:17.229" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""when you would unfold it.""" start="00:08:19.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And for this, I did not consider the facelet orientation.""" start="00:08:21.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This may be important later for some other puzzles""" start="00:08:25.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""where you can end up with very twisted faces,""" start="00:08:29.269" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but for simple cubes, it's not a problem.""" start="00:08:31.149" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""My initial prototype used colored text,""" start="00:08:33.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but later, I used the SVG library.""" start="00:08:36.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It turned out to be easy enough to use, actually.""" start="00:08:38.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Currently, I have hard-coded face-color mappings,""" start="00:08:41.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but I plan to replace this so that theming is possible.""" start="00:08:46.109" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""For example, if you happen to have a cube""" start="00:08:49.109" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that does not have the same color mappings as I do,""" start="00:08:51.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""then you should be able to fix this.""" start="00:08:54.690" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

UI with Transient

[[!template new="1" text="""Next challenge was to build""" start="00:08:56.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""a beautiful intuitive UI with Transient.""" start="00:09:01.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""The reason why I chose this is""" start="00:09:03.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because it would be self-documenting and Magit-style,""" start="00:09:06.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and everyone knows how Magit works basically.""" start="00:09:10.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Since Transient has become part of Emacs,""" start="00:09:12.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""there is really no reason to not try it out.""" start="00:09:15.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""The problem was documentation is difficult to understand.""" start="00:09:17.229" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It's very abstract and high level,""" start="00:09:21.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and it's hard to figure out. &quot;Okay,""" start="00:09:23.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I want to do something,""" start="00:09:25.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""how am I supposed to do this?&quot;""" start="00:09:26.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I did find transient-showcase, which has lots of examples,""" start="00:09:28.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but they don't really feel finished""" start="00:09:33.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and not realistic enough.""" start="00:09:35.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""When I tried to use the package,""" start="00:09:39.069" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I got plenty of unhelpful error messages""" start="00:09:40.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""when using it incorrectly.""" start="00:09:42.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I did manage to figure it out,""" start="00:09:44.109" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but I plan to find more actual examples of it,""" start="00:09:45.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""to have an executable reference basically""" start="00:09:50.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and try to improve my use of it.""" start="00:09:53.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Book-keeping with SQLite

[[!template new="1" text="""For the book-keeping, I used SQLite.""" start="00:09:55.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""This is a very recent addition to Emacs,""" start="00:10:01.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""it only appeared in the current major version.""" start="00:10:04.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It's still very early days.""" start="00:10:07.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I found some oddities, one of them turned out to be""" start="00:10:09.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""a bug in the transaction macro.""" start="00:10:13.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Like basically, if you do an SQL transaction""" start="00:10:14.829" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and an error happens, then every helper I found""" start="00:10:17.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""does a rollback on an error.""" start="00:10:20.189" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But this one did not. It actually committed on an error,""" start="00:10:20.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and this was very weird to figure out.""" start="00:10:26.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I reported a bug. Eli was nice enough to send me a patch.""" start="00:10:29.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""We did some patch review,""" start="00:10:34.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and he ended up fixing it properly.""" start="00:10:35.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So yes, there's still a lot to be done there, and yeah,""" start="00:10:37.989" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""the API is very basic.""" start="00:10:45.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""You don't have convenience helpers""" start="00:10:46.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""like fetch the first row or fetch the first value""" start="00:10:48.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""or anything, but they're easy enough to write yourself.""" start="00:10:51.309" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And the biggest challenge with this bookkeeping part""" start="00:10:54.430" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""was figuring out a decent schema,""" start="00:10:56.370" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""like how to organize data correctly""" start="00:10:58.029" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""so that it would not be awkward to manipulate.""" start="00:11:00.149" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And with this, you can finally build a package""" start="00:11:02.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that remembers its state properly""" start="00:11:05.749" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and don't have to run into foot guns""" start="00:11:07.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""with Lisp-style serialization, deserialization.""" start="00:11:10.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]

Conclusion

[[!template new="1" text="""So yes, that concludes it so far.""" start="00:11:12.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So what did I learn from this exercise?""" start="00:11:18.189" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Well, there are still plenty of packages""" start="00:11:22.189" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""for Emacs to be written.""" start="00:11:24.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""If you think everything you can think of""" start="00:11:25.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""or you need has already been written, well, guess what?""" start="00:11:28.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""No.""" start="00:11:31.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""These are still plenty of specialized things""" start="00:11:31.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""that could need your help.""" start="00:11:34.045" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""These cubes do not require advanced mathematics,""" start="00:11:36.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""contrary to what you may think.""" start="00:11:39.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Yes, you can apply advanced mathematics to them""" start="00:11:41.149" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""if you want to, but you don't have to.""" start="00:11:44.709" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""What surprised me about this is basically group theory.""" start="00:11:47.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I've heard of it before.""" start="00:11:50.989" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It seemed to be a meme, basically,""" start="00:11:52.069" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""because it has been like mostly Haskell people""" start="00:11:53.829" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""being very excited about this""" start="00:11:56.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and it seemed kind of, like, divorced from reality, basically.""" start="00:11:58.189" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But this puzzle, it actually proves that yes,""" start="00:12:02.509" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""it has its use.""" start="00:12:05.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""It definitely has.""" start="00:12:06.949" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""You just have to find the right problem matching it,""" start="00:12:08.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and yeah.""" start="00:12:11.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So yeah, once I understand it better,""" start="00:12:13.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""the topic, I expect to write better code.""" start="00:12:15.389" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""These new Emacs features, they work well enough.""" start="00:12:18.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""There are some rough edges.""" start="00:12:24.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""They definitely need more testing.""" start="00:12:25.909" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So please, please, everyone,""" start="00:12:27.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""if you write Elisp, please try SQLite or Transient""" start="00:12:30.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""or anything else that looks cool and shiny.""" start="00:12:34.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Report bugs.""" start="00:12:36.709" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Find ways to improve them, anything. And yeah,""" start="00:12:38.469" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I'm sure that if we do this,""" start="00:12:41.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""then Emacs will continue to get even better.""" start="00:12:44.869" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""So yeah, what's next for this package?""" start="00:12:47.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Well, I could... There are lots of obvious UI improvements""" start="00:12:51.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""and testing to be done.""" start="00:12:55.989" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I basically want to reach feature parity""" start="00:12:57.349" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""with the twisty-timer app, which this is very much inspired by.""" start="00:12:59.709" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I want nice-looking stats like graphical ones""" start="00:13:02.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""instead of just a simple list of times.""" start="00:13:06.669" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And I want support for more puzzles, of course,""" start="00:13:08.789" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""not just the simple cubes,""" start="00:13:11.229" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""but as I progress learning these puzzles,""" start="00:13:12.549" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""I want to have Emacs supporting me for this.""" start="00:13:14.589" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""But generally, it's a very open-ended package.""" start="00:13:18.069" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""And this concludes the talk.""" start="00:13:22.429" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]
[[!template text="""Thank you very much.""" start="00:13:26.629" video="mainVideo-cubing" id="subtitle"]]



Captioner: sachac

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