Reflections on not posting in a while…

It’s been quite some time since I wrote an update on the status of my projects.

I suppose I have been prioritising work on tangible projects over reflecting on them. This has been part of a wider trend in my habits recently.

Indeed, I would say that over the last year I have been coding quite a bit less. I suppose this might be partly due to my increasing use of AI in my projects, but I suspect that’s not entirely the cause. Even without AI, I feel I have reached a point where my approach to projects is changing.

Increasingly, I have been trying to focus on actually making things, rather than just trying to improve my skills.

While I think there is clearly a place for study, how can we have ideas if we don’t broaden our knowledge and abilities? I don’t want to study for the sake of it. I feel that learning should manifest into something real.

Android writing with a pen

Image generated with Adobe Firefly

What did I make?

So from a more material standpoint, what have I been doing?

Well, I decided to participate in Advent of Code last December. I made some moderate progress, authoring solutions in both Python and Haskell. I tried writing up these solutions for the blog, but the material felt repetitive compared to the commentary I had already made on the differences between those languages, so I didn’t feel it was worthwhile.

I also made some efforts early in the year to update my blog’s infrastructure (again). I won’t go into too much detail on that, I already wrote it up.

Probably my biggest achievement so far this year has been finally completing a project to archive my writings (at least my online writings) in a JSON file. The archive and script I use to create the archive files are available here.

I’ll admit that creating this archive is mostly an intellectual exercise since my writings remain online, but it’s good to have them recorded in one place in an easily readable format for both humans and AIs to consume.

Going forward

Increasingly, I’ve been thinking it is important to continue delivering things—making something rather than just studying for the sake of it. I do still think study is worthwhile, but the key is finding the right balance.

In particular, I have been wanting to investigate computer graphics for some time. Last year I tried studying Ray Tracing in a Weekend, but ultimately I need to dig deeper to find an angle that really sticks.

Next, I’ll probably try to rewrite my JSON archiving script in Haskell by hand (or mostly by hand, at least). I think that will be a solid practical exercise to help me write better scripts…

What I’ve been up to 6 © 2026 by William Samuel McDonald is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Discuss

New update! ql-blog.com/2026/07/25/w...

[image or embed]

— Sam McDonald (@sammcdonald.me) July 29, 2026 at 5:43 PM