About me

Forrest Gump waving gif

Hi there!

My name is Laurent Leconte (LinkedIn, Github), and this here is my blog. It ain’t much, but it’s mine.

If you’re reading this page, I assume you want to know a little bit more about me. Some of my interests include:

  • programming: specifically, I like solving problems, thinking about algorithms and trying to understand functional programming
  • security: I don’t pretend to be much good at it, but I love this topic. I’ve tried a few beginner CTFs and am slowly working my way through the Cryptopals challenges (currently on set 6)
  • puzzles: Sudoku, Scrabble, Wordle, crosswords, chess… The only thing I love more than puzzles is cheating my way out of them when I’m stuck. For instance, I spent more time than any normal person should analyzing the best opening moves for Wordle, and I’ve written a Summle solver
  • management: a weird hobby to have, I agree. My two favorite book genres are science fiction and management books 🤷‍♂️1

Ongoing projects

Like everyone, I have a tendency to start side projects and give them up after a few weeks. In the interest of holding myself accountable, I’m listing my past and ongoing projects here, with the last time I worked on them.

Wordle opening moves (finished)

The companion notebook to this article.

Last commit: Aug 11, 2022

Github repo

Imagier (finished-ish)

Building an interactive image book to teach my kids the alphabet (and to teach myself vue.js). You can see the current version of the app here.

I didn’t build all the features I had initially envisioned, but my kids know the alphabet now so that project is unlikely to see more progress.

Last commit: Dec 2, 2023

Github repo

Summle solver (mostly done)

I was frustrated that I couldn’t solve some Summle puzzles, so I wrote a solver. I then tinkered with the code to see if I could make it more efficient, which included rewriting the Python version 3 times and porting the code to OCaml. I use the solver often enough that I have a moderate to-do list of features to add.

Last commit: Jan 21, 2023

Github repo

Crypopals (ongoing)

Solving the Cryptopals challenges. Solved the first 6 sets, working up the courage the tackle the last 2.

Last commit: Sept 6, 2022

Credits

Front page : photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

  1. These two genres have more in common than you’d think. Most are badly written, for instance. And most can be adequately summarized in one paragraph. ↩︎