Software on Simon Duchastel

MTA Data Visualizer

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Back in September, the MTA announced their first Open Data Challenge. The idea is that they publish a lot of data online for free and want to encourage people to make use of it, so they announced a challenge where the most creative uses of their data after a month would win MTA memorabilia.

For my submission, I built a website that displays the real-time number of people that have ridden the subway so far today. While I didn’t win, I had a lot of fun building the project. The other submissions were super impressive too - I highly encourage you check them out on the MTA’s blog. My personal favorite is Noah Gunther’s Lately on the MTA, which is frankly a better version of my own project.

My Advent of Code 2023

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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I finally got around to writing about how I used Rust 6 months ago for the 2023 Advent of Code. I’ve been meaning to try out Rust in a small personal project for a few years now but have never gotten around to it.

What is Rust

Rust is a new(ish) systems language often touted as a replacement for C++. It’s become very popular in the developer community over the last few years. Notably, Amazon announced that they were moving to Rust for a lot of their systems.

Building my website with Hugo + Go

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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Twenty years ago, my family bought the domain duchastel.com (our family’s last name). Initially my family used it to host some bios but it hasn’t been updated in years. I’m thankful to them for buying and holding onto that domain though, as it now gives me an opportunity to build and manage my own website.

Goals

I had a few high-level goals which motivated me to build this website:

My Advent of Code 2022

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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View the website for computing solutions

This year I participated in the Advent of Code for the third year in a row. I wrote my solutions in Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) like I did in 2021, but this time using with the Javascript compiler and Jetpack Compose to render a website written in Kotlin.

I shared some thoughts on Kotlin Multiplatform last year. My thoughts mostly haven’t changed. The ecosystem appears to be maturing, which is good. There’s still a ways to go before it’s at a point where I think it will be ready for broad adoption but I’m excited for KMP to continue to evolve.

My Advent of Code 2021

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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This year (or should I say last year now), I wanted to use Advent of Code as an excuse to try something new. I thought of using Rust since my coworkers are using it on their teams and it seems like a cool language, but I decided instead to use Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) since I’m more familiar with Kotlin and wanted to try out the Multiplatform compilers. Maybe I’ll do Rust next year.

Some old software projects

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As the first post for this website I thought it would be cool to reflect on some software projects I did in high school and college. None are particularly spectacular, but my philosophy is that the things you do in your free time don’t have to be spectacular. I had fun doing them, and I also enjoy the opportunity to write some thoughts down on them in retrospect.

Advent of Code 2020

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