Some time ago I wrote about my plans for 2023. What I didn’t mention is that I intend to publish an update to those plans periodically.
I already announced that my accounting book is done. That means that I started studying the topic of web extensions. Learning to write them was something I’ve had in mind for quite a long time, and now the time for that has finally come.
I started with a guide on the MDN web docs, and it quickly turned out that the guide is very… un-guide-y. (Well, it started fine, but then it quickly morphed into a poorly written reference…) I was writing about my impressions while reading, and I suspected that my impressions may sound rantish from time to time. What I didn’t suspect was that they will be rantish most of the time. I understand some of the reasons the quality of the document is what it is – web extensions are a moving target, and there are way fewer people writing browser extensions than web programmers. Still, I didn’t expect the guide to be that badly written. (Also, the design of browser extensions itself is a bit alien to me – it is very different than that of Emacs, which is all about giving maximum freedom and power to the user. Here, a lot of things which would be technologically feasible and potentially useful are blocked because of security reasons. While I understand the rationale, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth…)
Of course, the internet is full of people criticizing stuff they encounter, and the usual response is “if you don’t like it, try to do better”. Point is, that is exactly my plan! Writing a book (possibly a booklet) about programming browser extensions is the next step.
But first things first – I want to finish that thing first, and read another one Mozilla apparently put out (which I sincerely hope is going to be better). Also, I’m learning in public, writing my thoughts for all of you to read as I study. As I mentioned in my post about plans, this is going to be a bit weird, quite possibly embarassing, perhaps boring – but the way to find out is to publish it!
Anyway, that is pretty much it – so far, I didn’t update the Elisp book (but I’ll get to it!), and the secret part of my plans is, well, still a secret. Stay tuned!