All the Things You Are Chord Melody


![🌙](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2024-10-26.jpg)

The veil is thin. 👻

Squeaked in _one_ Inktober drawing this year! Very much directly inspired by the energetic ink work of [Violaine Briat's](https://www.violainebriat.com/) [Lil' Dee](https://violainebriat.myshopify.com/products/lil-dee).


Night Lake


The week in sketches!

Playing with more gesture studies 🦜

![Tucan](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/41_toucan.png)
![Pup and butterfly](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/39_dog_and_butterfly.png)
![Hippo](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/hippo.png)


Animal Gestures


Two axis of typing, both with specific meanings:

## Static vs Dynamic

This dimension answers the question "are types checked at runtime or compile time?"

TypeScript, Go, and C# are languages that assert types at compile time. If there's a type error, your program simply won't compile (or transpile, in TypeScript's case.)

Dynamically typed languages are only asserted at runtime. With JavaScript, for example, you could ship code that will break due to a type mismatch, but may seem fine in the text editor. 

In **static** typed languages like TypeScript, Go, C#, Java, etc., a variable on declaration requires a type. Here's an example in each language:

```
let name : string = "Chris" // TypeScript
let name = "Chris" // TypeScript infers the string type

var tickets uint = 2 // Go
price := 3 // Go infers type with the shorthand

String city = "Dallas" // Java
string state = "Texas" // C#

```

In a case like this, I wouldn't be able to change any of the string variables to an int and vice versa. An error will occur at some point letting me know that I've passed an incorrect value to a variable.

So another way of looking at it is "do my variables hold the type or my values?" Though, we'll see exceptions to this in the next section.

In JavaScript, Ruby, and Python, the value maintains the type, not the variable. Here's an example in python:

```
favorite_pizza = "Cheese"
favorite_pizza = 100
```


## Strong vs Weak

This dimension is a bit more nuanced. In simple terms, this question answers "Can I work around those types?"

Here's a common example of weak typing in JavaScript:

```
// JavaScript
const a = 1;
const b = "1"
const c = a + b; // "11"
```

Python is considered strongly typed, but we don't declare our types. We can't, however, do the above JavaScript string and int addition.

In strongly type languages, conversions need to be explicit. You would need to write something like this to add a string and int:

```
1 + int("1")
```

So, Python is a dynamic, strongly typed language.

TypeScript is the opposite of Python. While being statically typed, it's still weakly typed, because JavaScript is weakly typed. This still runs without errors:

```
const a int = 1
const b string = '1'
console.log(a + b) // 11
```

That makes TypeScript a weak, statically language.

Typing — Strong vs Weak and Static vs Dynamic


When it comes to answering the question "What's worth doing?", the internet can muddy it up a bit.

Plenty of good to the internet: Shared information, connecting with far flung people, and finding community.

And, it's also a utility that can deceive us into feeling infinite.

I was surprised to see Nintendo's former president Satoru Iwata wrestle with this in an interview he gave for [Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shumbun](https://www.1101.com) that was published in the book "Ask Iwata."

> "The internet also has a way of broadening your motivations. In the past, it was possible to live without knowing there were people out there who we might be able to help, but today, we're able to see more situations where we might be of service. But this doesn't mean we've shed the limitations on the time at our disposal.
>
> ...as a result, it's become more difficult than ever to determine how to spend the hours of the day without regret."

Wholly relatable. Very warm to see Iwata put this in terms of serving people. For creative folk, this could be anything from projects to pursue, audiences to reach, and relationships to develop. There's, I'm sure, an interesting intersection with another change in history — the ability to reproduce art.

> "It's more about deciding where to direct your limited supply of time and energy. On a deeper level, I think this is about doing what you were born to do."

Less is the answer, and considering your unique position is what takes the place of overwhelming choice. What you were born to do can be a heavy question unto itself, but thinking of it as what you're in the unique position to do helps.

I'll paraphrase Miyazaki here: "I focus on only what's a few meters from me. Even more important than my films, that entertain countless children across the world, is making at least three children I see in a given day smile." Focusing on the physical space and your real, irl relationships, is likely to guide you towards what's worth doing.


Chris Padilla/Blog

On This Day