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+---
+title: 'Advent of Languages 2024, Day 5: Roc'
+date: 2025-09-30
+draft: true
+toc: false
+---
+
+import Sidenote from '@components/Sidenote.astro';
+
+I know I said at the beginning that I was most likely not going to get through much of Advent of Code before running out of steam and giving up on the whole different-language-every-day thing, but man, even I wasn't expecting to only make it through 4 days before giving up. That's a new low, even for me.
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+I think the problem is that I decided, in my hubris, that I was going to do Lisp for Day 5--and not a nice, friendly modern Lisp like Clojure, either, but straight-up old-fashioned Common Lisp.<Sidenote>Which isn't even the oldest of Lisps, since it only dates back to 1994. Plenty old enough for me, though.</Sidenote> For some strange reason, as soon as I reached this decision, I discovered that I had lost all interest in the project and was now actively seeking excuses to avoid it. Funny coincidence, huh?
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+I'm not entirely sure why I'm so subliminally resistant to the idea of using Lisp. I don't think it's _just_ because there's set of people who like to talk about Lisp as if it's superior to every other language that has ever existed or _could_ ever possibly exist, because after every language has some of those. It's more than that. It's the way that they [manage to convey](https://paulgraham.com/avg.html), without ever being so gauche as to actually come out and _say_ it, that using Lisp means that they're a better programmer than you, and smarter than you, and just all-around _better_ than you in every meaningful way. Oh, you disagree? Well, you must just not be smart enough to truly appreciate Lisp. But don't worry, it doesn't make you a _bad person_. Just, you know, not as good as _me_.
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+Anyway, as you'll note from the title, I eventually decided to give up on Lisp for the time being. By then, of course, it was too late to continue with Advent of Code, so I left the project to languish for most of the subsequent year. But you know what? I've got a hankering to try a new programming language again, and one I've had my eye on for a while is [Roc](https://roc-lang.org).
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+Roc is a statically-typed, purely<Sidenote>I think.</Sidenote> functional language. It's headed up by the guy who created Elm, which I've heard mostly good things about, and it looks sort of like a more-approachable version of Haskell, with an emphasis on performance--like, actual runtime performance--and approachability. It has a heavy focus on developer tooling as well, so that's kind of cool. Also, it has built-in string interpolation, of the `${expression}` flavor, like Javascript. Except that _unlike_