I ultimately got tired of waiting for free, high-energy code time (have been working extra hours on day-job lately because the current project is fun and important) to implement the new post script, so I asked "ChatGPT o1" to do it for me.
I copy/pasted the raw HTML of the specifying blog post and asked for an implementation in Rust.
I walked through it word by word, line by line. I looked up the standard library functions it used I didn't know. It left some items undone with comments requesting further insight. I told it how I wanted those and merged in its changes.
All in all, after some revisions, the solution is great. It works. It's clearly written and documented, with good function and variable names, well positioned comments, and at the border of my Rust syntax knowledge.
Importantly, this problem is incredibly contained and simple. It's a one file script that I mused about writing in one sitting in the airport. (Though I failed to, in that time.)
Pretty good!
For now, my general programming knowledge was useful in making some decisions and sanding rough edges. But my Rust syntax knowledge was largely useless next to o1, besides my ability to comprehend its work.
Not long before the programming language design evolves for rapid writing by a model, consumption by an engineer, and comprehensible diffing in response.
In other news, at work, where I use GitHub Copilot and Raycast Pro (usually set to ChatGPT 4o-mini, but sometimes to Claude Sonnet 3.5), I am manually typing lots of code (anything not recommended by IntelliJ or Copilot), and have been working enough that the tips of my fingers are literally starting to hurt... Maybe time to brave the snow, ice, and cold and touch some grass.
Or, you know, dig my full-size keyboard out of its moving box...