My Tangle with zzz 1.0 Events
Alright, so I finally got around to messing with zzz 1.0. Heard some talk about its new ‘events’ system, figured I’d see what the fuss was about. Needed something for a little side project anyway, to handle different things happening without tangling all the code together.
First thing, I grabbed the zzz 1.0 package. Installed it. Then I started looking for how these events actually worked. Documentation was… well, let’s just say it wasn’t holding my hand. Spent a good hour just poking around, trying to find a basic example.
My goal was simple: make something happen when I clicked a button. Seemed easy enough, right? So I tried setting up what looked like an event listener. Wrote some code, ran it. Nothing. Okay, maybe I got the event name wrong? Tried a few variations. Still nothing. Bit frustrating, honestly.
Started throwing print statements everywhere, trying to see where things were going wrong. Realized after a while I hadn’t actually started the event processing loop, or whatever zzz 1.0 calls it. It was just sitting there, waiting for a command I hadn’t given. Found the right function call, stuck it in. Ran it again.
Success! Sort of. My console finally printed “Button Clicked!”. Felt like a major victory after wrestling with it. Okay, basic listening works. Good.
Making Events Do More
Next step, I wanted to pass some data with the event. Like, when you click, tell the listener which button was clicked, or maybe pass a value. Back to the guessing game and trial-and-error. Tried stuffing data directly into the trigger function. Didn’t seem to arrive at the listener. Tried creating a little object to hold the data. That seemed closer.
Eventually, I figured out the pattern. You had to wrap the data in a specific way, almost like putting it in an envelope, before sending the event. And the listener needed to know how to open that envelope. Took a few tries to get the sending and receiving parts talking the same language.
- Tried sending a plain number. Didn’t work right.
- Tried sending a string. Got it working.
- Tried a small custom object. That finally clicked.
Once I got that down, I started using it properly in my test thing. Had one part sending an ‘update score’ event, and another part listening for it and changing the display. It actually felt pretty clean, much better than directly calling functions across different parts of the code. Decoupled, I think they call it.
So, my takeaway from zzz 1.0 events? It’s got potential. Definitely simplifies handling interactions once you figure it out. But getting there was a bit of a pain. The documentation really needs work, more practical examples. It felt rough around the edges, like you’re expected to just know how it thinks. But, yeah, it works. Managed to get my little project responding to things nicely using it. It’s a tool, and like any tool, takes some practice to use well.
