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+date = 2023-02-02
+title = "Exploring the Hare Programming Language"
+description = "Walking back through my first project using the Hare programming language."
+aliases = ["/blog/testing-out-hare"]
++++
+
+## 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 [Hare](https://harelang.org) 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:
+
+> 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.
+
+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.
+
+```sh
+doas apk add hare hare-doc
+```
+
+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 [Hare 
+Installation](https://harelang.org/installation/) page.
+
+### Creating a Test Project
+
+In order to play with the language, I created
+[hare-test](https://git.sr.ht/~cmc/hare-projects) and will be 
+putting any of my Hare-related adventures in here.
+
+> **Update:** I also created a simple Hare program for creating a file from user
+> input:
+> [files.ha](https://git.sr.ht/~cmc/hare-projects/tree/main/item/files/files.ha)
+
+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.
+
+```sh
+nano rgb.ha
+```
+
+Within this file, I was able to easily import a few of the [standard library
+modules](https://harelang.org/tutorials/stdlib/): `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.
+
+> **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.
+
+```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;
+};
+```
+
+### Running a Program
+
+Once you have a Hare file written and ready to run, you simply need to run it:
+
+```sh
+hare run file.ha
+```
+
+You can also compile the program into an executable:
+
+```sh
+hare build -o example file.ha
+./example
+```
+
+### Initial Thoughts
+
+#### 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 [Hare source
+code](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare/tree/master/item/math/random/random.ha)
+and found the test suite that helped me discover that it needed an `init()`
+value in the form of `&var`.
+
+#### 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.
+
+#### 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.