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+#+title: Exploring the Hare Programming Language
+#+date: 2023-02-02
+#+description: A retrospective on my first time using the Hare Programming Language.
+#+filetags: :dev:
+
+* A Quick Note
+By no means am I a professional developer, so this post will be rather
+short. I won't be going into depth on the specification or anything that
+technical.
+
+Instead, I will simply be talking about how I (a relatively basic
+hobbyist programmer) have been playing with Hare and what intrigues me
+about the language.
+
+* Hare
+The [[https://harelang.org][Hare]] programming language is a
+straightforward language that should look familiar if you've ever
+programmed with C, Rust, or other languages that aim to build software
+at the system-level.
+
+The Hare homepage states the following:
+
+#+begin_quote
+Hare is a systems programming language designed to be simple, stable,
+and robust. Hare uses a static type system, manual memory management,
+and minimal runtime. It is well-suited to writing operating systems,
+system tools, compilers, networking software, and other low-level, high
+performance tasks.
+
+#+end_quote
+
+I have found this all to be true while playing with it for the first
+time today. In the next few sections, I'm going to walk through my
+installation and first program.
+
+** Installation
+I'm currently running Alpine Linux on my Thinkpad, so the installation
+was quite easy as there is a package for Hare in the =apk= repositories.
+
+#+begin_src sh
+doas apk add hare hare-doc
+#+end_src
+
+However, I was able to install Hare from scratch on Fedora Linux a short
+while ago, which was also very easy to do. If you need further
+instructions and Hare doesn't have a package on your system, take a look
+at the [[https://harelang.org/installation/][Hare Installation]] page.
+
+** Creating a Test Project
+In order to play with the language, I created
+[[https://git.sr.ht/~cmc/hare-projects][hare-test]] and will be putting
+any of my Hare-related adventures in here.
+
+#+begin_quote
+*Update:** I also created a simple Hare program for creating a file from
+user input:
+[[https://git.sr.ht/~cmc/hare-projects/tree/main/item/files/files.ha][files.ha]]
+
+#+end_quote
+
+Luckily, Hare doesn't require any complex set-up tools or build
+environment. Once you have Hare installed, you simply need to create a
+file ending with =.ha= and you can run a Hare program.
+
+I created a file called =rgb.ha= in order to test out the random number
+generation and passing parameters between functions.
+
+#+begin_src sh
+nano rgb.ha
+#+end_src
+
+Within this file, I was able to easily import a few of the
+[[https://harelang.org/tutorials/stdlib/][standard library modules]]:
+=fmt=, =math::random=, and =datetime=.
+
+With these modules, I created two functions:
+
+1. =main=: This function calls the =generate_rgb= function and then
+   prints out the returned values.
+2. =generate_rgb=: This function uses the current Unix epoch time to
+   generate a pseudo-random value and uses this value to create three
+   more random values between 0 and 255. These three numbers represent a
+   color in RGB format.
+
+#+begin_quote
+*Note*: Some syntax coloring may look odd, as Zola currently doesn't
+have a syntax highlighting theme for Hare. Instead, I'm using the C
+theme, which may not be exactly accurate when coloring the code below.
+
+#+end_quote
+
+#+begin_src C
+use datetime;
+use fmt;
+use math::random;
+
+export fn main() void = {
+    const rgb = generate_rgb();
+    fmt::printfln("RGB: ({}, {}, {})", rgb[0], rgb[1], rgb[2])!;
+};
+
+fn generate_rgb() []u64 = {
+    // Use the current Unix epoch time as the seed value
+    let datetime = datetime::epochunix(&datetime::now());
+
+    // Generate initial pseudo-random value
+    // You must cast the datetime from int to u64
+    let x = random::init(datetime: u64);
+
+    // Generate RGB values between (0, 255) using pseudo-random init value
+    let r = random::u64n(&x, 255);
+    let g = random::u64n(&x, 255);
+    let b = random::u64n(&x, 255);
+
+    // Structure data as array and return
+    let rgb_array: [3]u64 = [r, g, b];
+    return rgb_array;
+};
+#+end_src
+
+** Running a Program
+Once you have a Hare file written and ready to run, you simply need to
+run it:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+hare run file.ha
+#+end_src
+
+You can also compile the program into an executable:
+
+#+begin_src sh
+hare build -o example file.ha
+./example
+#+end_src
+
+** Initial Thoughts
+1. Documentation Improvements Would Help
+
+   While I was able to piece everything together eventually, the biggest
+   downfall right now in Hare's documentation. For such a new project,
+   the documentation is in a great spot. However, bare specifications
+   don't help as much as a brief examples section would.
+
+   For example, it took me a while to figure out what the =u64n=
+   function was looking for. I could tell that it took two parameters
+   and the second was my max value (255), but couldn't figure out what
+   the first value should be. Eventually, I inspected the =random.ha=
+   file in the
+   [[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare/tree/master/item/math/random/random.ha][Hare
+   source code]] and found the test suite that helped me discover that
+   it needed an =init()= value in the form of =&var=.
+
+2. More Basic Modules
+
+   This is another point that comes from Hare being new and awaiting
+   more contributions, but there are some basic functions that I would
+   personally enjoy seeing in Hare, such as one to convert decimal
+   (base 10) values to hexadecimal (base 16).
+
+   If I'm feeling comfortable with my math, I may work on the list of
+   functions I want and see if any can make it into the Hare source
+   code.
+
+3. Overall Thoughts
+
+   Overall, I actually really enjoy Hare. It's not as tedious to get a
+   project up and running as Rust, but it's also simpler and more
+   user-friendly than learning C. I am going to continue playing with it
+   and see if I can make anything of particular value.