It's Mechanical March!

Psst. Check the bottom of this post for social posts to share to help us spread the word. Thank you :blue_heart:


Hi everyone!

Welcome to Mechanical March, a month dedicated to languages that compile to machine code such as C, C++, D, Go, Nim, Rust, V and Zig!

We’re aiming to build on the success of Functional February with more interviews, more live streaming, more swag and more great content. I’m delighted to announce that we’ve already lined up some amazing guests, including Josh Trippett, co-lead of Rust (date to be confirmed), and Johnny Boursiquot, a leading figure in Go (add a notification on YouTube.

Our featured exercises are:

  • Linked List (or Simple Linked List): Practice allocating/freeing memory, and pointers
  • Secret Handshake: Explore bitwise operators
  • Pangram: Explore for loops, strings and characters
  • Sieve: Practice arrays and for loops
  • Binary Search: A classic exercise for loops.

To get started visit our #12in23 Challenge page. And make sure to watch our Intro to Mechanical March video, in which Erik and I introduce the month, discuss what makes machine code interesting, and give a brief overview and comparison of the featured languages:

There’s loads to challenge and inspire you this month, regardless of your level of experience. If you’ve not worked with low-level languages before, you’ll find it fascinating and empowering to explore concepts like manual memory management. If you’re more seasoned with systems languages, check out the cutting edge compiler in Rust, or the simplicity in Go.

Whatever you choose to explore, have fun!


Help spread the word

Here’s a Tweet and LinkedIn post that I’ve written. I’d really appreciate you liking, sharing, and commenting to help spread the word. Thank you :blue_heart:

https://twitter.com/exercism_io/status/1630908226534244352

3 Likes

I seem to have missed the featured exercises challenge. I see them listed for Mechanical March but can’t find them for Functional February.
Can anyone point me to to place where I can find them?
Or better still, add them to the Google Doc.

They are listed in this forum post:

1 Like

Thank you.

1 Like

Implementing doubly-linked lists in C is something I’ve done before. Unfortunately the last time was in the early 1990’s - it took me a while to chip the rust off those brain cells.

I’m not sure how Fortran will work out in Jurassic July. The last time I used that much was in 1975.

3 Likes

I managed to get all featured exercises done for Mechanical March, but did not get that special batch for completing all featured exercises in one of the languages (Rust); will it come later (because you’ve got time for the entire year)? Is it a bug? Or did I misunderstand the criteria for getting the badge?