Watch this space.
Or not. It's your choice, really. I can't force you to watch. Besides, just sitting there and watching this space will probably be as entertaining and productive as watching a pot of water on a stove come to the boil; less productive in fact, because presumably the water will boil eventually and you can use it, long before I get some really meaningful content on here...wait, you did make sure the stove is on, right?
This is my first website, so don't be surprised if it is devoid of something actually worth looking at until such time as I have a handle on everything. Such as what it's actually going to look like, seeing as this is just a template I've whacked some text onto so it doesn't look totally blank. Mind you, that does not preclude me from being totally blank, either right at this moment, or at any time in the future.
This is my first website, so don't be surprised if it is devoid of something actually worth looking at until such time as I have a handle on everything. Such as what it's actually going to look like, seeing as this is just a template I've whacked some text onto so it doesn't look totally blank. Mind you, that does not preclude me from being totally blank, either right at this moment, or at any time in the future.
Coming soon.
Stuff. Things. Items. And probably a few more Nouns, along with the odd Verb and Adjective thrown in for good measure (or at least, some modicum of legibility).
Seriously though, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint everyone by stating right here and now that this will mostly be a personal blogging site, centered around what are (in my humble opinion) the joys of coding. Also known as 'computer programming', or even 'software development' by those who seem to think that the longer a term is for something, the more vital and important it is.
Yes it's true, in this day and age software runs our lives, and it is vital and important. This is because business and society have made it so, mostly over the past 30 years, in order to 'make life easier' or some such rubbish. But this site doesn't care about that; I'm fairly sure that I won't be putting any boring business-oriented hogwash on here.
Seriously though, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint everyone by stating right here and now that this will mostly be a personal blogging site, centered around what are (in my humble opinion) the joys of coding. Also known as 'computer programming', or even 'software development' by those who seem to think that the longer a term is for something, the more vital and important it is.
Yes it's true, in this day and age software runs our lives, and it is vital and important. This is because business and society have made it so, mostly over the past 30 years, in order to 'make life easier' or some such rubbish. But this site doesn't care about that; I'm fairly sure that I won't be putting any boring business-oriented hogwash on here.
In Store.
These days, there are more 'programmers' -- and 'programming languages' -- than one can poke a stick at. I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of both are oriented towards business purposes, or more truthfully, the business of making money.
When I first started fiddling with computers, they were still relatively new to mainstream life and were mostly used for games. When I first started writing my own code, Turbo C / Turbo Pascal were still amongst the compilers of choice, DPMI was a fledgling technology for the next generation of hardware (read: the ability to have more than 1Mb RAM on board), VGA video cards and monitors were a luxury rather than the norm, and the about the closest thing to 3D games engines were Catacombs 3D and Ken's Labyrinth. (For those of you who don't recall those, think Wolfenstein 3D with less colours.)
In those days (back when Noah designed the Ark on a slate with a piece of chalk because he was still waiting for the computer to finish booting to DOS) writing code was done for fun and the sheer challenge of it by a great many budding programmers. Myself included. My very first attempt at coding was an algorithm I developed in an effort to reduce the space taken up by every word in the English dictionary, intended for use in a crossword game; it was written in Edlin (a very old text editor) on an aging Intel 8088 with a whopping 20Mb of hard-disk space, because I could afford neither a better computer nor any flavour of compiler at the time. For the record, I later rewrote that algorithm in Turbo Pascal, and after the usual 'porting' (from my own personal pseudocode) and debugging, it actually worked; I had developed my first computer program -- a compression algorithm, no less -- with no real knowledge of programming and a whacky idea. And I was hooked from that moment on.
So what's all this in aid of anyway? Well, this site is going to be dedicated to the sheer fun of coding. Over the years I've spent my time writing and rewriting code for the hell of it; I have an (often crazy) idea and I try to make it work; I see some cool new effect in a game and I challenge myself to recreate it without access to the game's sources; I come across an interesting problem and try to develop a solution; I read about an algorithm and try to learn how it works and what I can do with it; I pull the source code to games apart to learn how they work and to challenge myself to improve them. Why?
When I first started fiddling with computers, they were still relatively new to mainstream life and were mostly used for games. When I first started writing my own code, Turbo C / Turbo Pascal were still amongst the compilers of choice, DPMI was a fledgling technology for the next generation of hardware (read: the ability to have more than 1Mb RAM on board), VGA video cards and monitors were a luxury rather than the norm, and the about the closest thing to 3D games engines were Catacombs 3D and Ken's Labyrinth. (For those of you who don't recall those, think Wolfenstein 3D with less colours.)
In those days (back when Noah designed the Ark on a slate with a piece of chalk because he was still waiting for the computer to finish booting to DOS) writing code was done for fun and the sheer challenge of it by a great many budding programmers. Myself included. My very first attempt at coding was an algorithm I developed in an effort to reduce the space taken up by every word in the English dictionary, intended for use in a crossword game; it was written in Edlin (a very old text editor) on an aging Intel 8088 with a whopping 20Mb of hard-disk space, because I could afford neither a better computer nor any flavour of compiler at the time. For the record, I later rewrote that algorithm in Turbo Pascal, and after the usual 'porting' (from my own personal pseudocode) and debugging, it actually worked; I had developed my first computer program -- a compression algorithm, no less -- with no real knowledge of programming and a whacky idea. And I was hooked from that moment on.
So what's all this in aid of anyway? Well, this site is going to be dedicated to the sheer fun of coding. Over the years I've spent my time writing and rewriting code for the hell of it; I have an (often crazy) idea and I try to make it work; I see some cool new effect in a game and I challenge myself to recreate it without access to the game's sources; I come across an interesting problem and try to develop a solution; I read about an algorithm and try to learn how it works and what I can do with it; I pull the source code to games apart to learn how they work and to challenge myself to improve them. Why?
For amusement purposes only.
And that's what this site is going to be about. To be honest, it's probably going to start out with me just babbling on a lot of drivel about various algorithms or snippets of code that I found interesting or challenging. There'll be a lot of code (probably all in C++, since the C/C++ syntax has been my weapon of choice for most of my coding life) which I will discuss in possibly nauseating detail, and there will most certainly be an over-abundance of my own strange (and hopefully, occasionally mildly amusing) commentary, because I'm the kind of person who gets on a roll and just won't shut the hell up.
In fact, what you see here is probably a good example of the kind of drivel I'm talking about.
Eventually, I'm hoping I'll get it to the point where it will contain content which actually serves a purpose, such as code snippets, tutorials, discussions about coding practices and ideas, even -- if I can figure out how to get one running -- a forum so like-minded coders can discuss (or hopefully, improve upon) what I've posted. Essentially, I'm hoping to create a code-lover's site based on the idea of 'open source' - free code, given freely, by and for people who create code because they actually want to, not just because they are paid to. Because to some people, great code is entertaining, challenging, thought-provoking, and should not have a $ attached to it unless it's written in, say, BASIC.
Yes, so far the site is not pretty. It really doesn't serve any purpose right now except to take up a few MB of server space with what many would (probably rightly) class as mindless nonsense. Mind you, many would say that this is the internet after all, and at this point my contribution so far is no worse than a lot of other equally-or-less-mindless nonsense out there.
However I'm hoping that over time, it may actually be worth something to someone, because a lot of what I have learned as a coder has come from random contributors on the internet, and I'd like to pass some of my own knowledge and insights on to fellow coders just as they have done for me. Many times I have found code snippets and algorithms that have helped me, and other times I have found virtually nothing useful on a given topic and have had to the develop code from nothing but the idea of what I need done. It's the latter that I primarily want to focus on; with any luck, I might have some code that may help someone else with thier own coding dilemma, and if I can help -- or even provoke meaningful thought and discussion from -- a few of the who-knows-how-many coders on this planet, I'll count it as a win.
Who knows, I may even post pseudocode for my word-compression algorithm. Just for a laugh.
In fact, what you see here is probably a good example of the kind of drivel I'm talking about.
Eventually, I'm hoping I'll get it to the point where it will contain content which actually serves a purpose, such as code snippets, tutorials, discussions about coding practices and ideas, even -- if I can figure out how to get one running -- a forum so like-minded coders can discuss (or hopefully, improve upon) what I've posted. Essentially, I'm hoping to create a code-lover's site based on the idea of 'open source' - free code, given freely, by and for people who create code because they actually want to, not just because they are paid to. Because to some people, great code is entertaining, challenging, thought-provoking, and should not have a $ attached to it unless it's written in, say, BASIC.
Yes, so far the site is not pretty. It really doesn't serve any purpose right now except to take up a few MB of server space with what many would (probably rightly) class as mindless nonsense. Mind you, many would say that this is the internet after all, and at this point my contribution so far is no worse than a lot of other equally-or-less-mindless nonsense out there.
However I'm hoping that over time, it may actually be worth something to someone, because a lot of what I have learned as a coder has come from random contributors on the internet, and I'd like to pass some of my own knowledge and insights on to fellow coders just as they have done for me. Many times I have found code snippets and algorithms that have helped me, and other times I have found virtually nothing useful on a given topic and have had to the develop code from nothing but the idea of what I need done. It's the latter that I primarily want to focus on; with any luck, I might have some code that may help someone else with thier own coding dilemma, and if I can help -- or even provoke meaningful thought and discussion from -- a few of the who-knows-how-many coders on this planet, I'll count it as a win.
Who knows, I may even post pseudocode for my word-compression algorithm. Just for a laugh.
Ken's Labyrinth - 1993
© Ken Silverman (Official page: www.advsys.net/ken/klab.htm)
Catacomb 3D - 1991
Wolfenstein 3D - 1992
© id Software (Official page: www.idsoftware.com/games/vintage)
© Ken Silverman (Official page: www.advsys.net/ken/klab.htm)
Catacomb 3D - 1991
Wolfenstein 3D - 1992
© id Software (Official page: www.idsoftware.com/games/vintage)
FAPO © 2012 Eric A Carter
