Alright so I finally decided to try bulj today after seeing everyone rave about it online. Grabbed my laptop, opened the terminal, and typed bulj install like the instructions said. Nothing happened. Just blinked at me like a confused owl. Realized I forgot the damn -g flag for global install. Rookie mistake.
The Setup Struggle
After installing, I tried running bulj new_project. Error message popped up saying missing dependencies. Scratched my head for 10 minutes until I remembered I needed NodeJS installed first. Went to Node’s site, downloaded the LTS version like they recommended. Hit run again – worked this time! Felt good seeing that Project initialized successfully message.
Configuration Headaches
Opened the config file and nearly had a heart attack. Walls of JSON! Looked like:
"plugins": [],
"presets": []
No clue what to put there. Searched bulj’s GitHub issues section randomly and found people mentioning preset_beginner. Threw that into presets array like:
"presets": ["preset_beginner"]
Saved it thinking that’d solve everything. Nope! Forgot commas after each array item. Bulj spat out angry red errors until I fixed the syntax.
First Real Test
Created a test script called hello_* with just one line:
print("Hey world!")
Ran bulj execute hello_*. Terminal printed:
>> Compiling...
>> Hey world!
>> Done in 0.2s
Did a little victory dance! Finally saw actual output after two hours of wrestling.
Adding Basic Functionality
Tried making a simple counter:
let count = 0
while count < 5 {
print(count)
count = count + 1
Bulj yelled about unexpected token ‘let’. Turns out variables need mut keyword for changing values. Changed it to mut count = 0 and bam – watched it count up to 4. Felt like wizardry.
Final Thoughts
Bulj’s got sharp edges but here’s what worked for me:
Always check error messages twice – they actually tell you what’s wrong
Start stupid simple before adding complexity
Expect typos to ruin your life – I misspelled ‘print’ three times
Spent 4 hours total for what looks like 5 lines of code. Worth it? Honestly yeah. Now I won’t feel like a deer in headlights next time someone mentions bulj at meetups.
