21–29 of 29 posts
I guess I'm still learning how to code :)
Since I wanted to do game programming I taught myself C++. I still remember the three books I borrowed, one is Deitel's "C++ How to program", one is "C++ Primer" and the third is "Walls and mirrors", a book about data structure and algorithms.
I read about 60% into the first two books and half into the third one, did a few trivial game projects, eventually stopped at writing a 2D tile based rpg engine. I was thinking a little too complex at the moment, that I would like to implement a scripting language amd an editor inside of the engine (NWN is a major inspiration). Eventually I got a basic editor running up and sort of xml-like configuration language for scripting, but the project is too messy so I stopped working on it.
Anyway that is probably the most complicated project I worked on. I took a second shot last year, taking another route using MapEditor as the map editor and implemented shadow casting. But then I dropped the project again. It was not as interesting as it was 10 years ago.
Though the learning never stops.
That turned into php and custom wordpress implementations for more money (all terribly coded in retrospect). I even ended up making a 100% custom CMS for our WoW guild website.
I've never been great at sitting down with a book to learn, and need a problem I'm trying to actively solve (with much googling).
When you are self taught you selectively avoid so much garbage that formally educated developers cannot live without. I guess when the education is entirely a cost of your personal time and frustration you tend to prefer utility over convention and durability over convenience. You don’t want to waste time on unnecessary things yet simultaneously don’t want to indefinitely repair sloppy code easily written with weakness and laziness.
High school in the 80s, I wanted to get the $50 Timex Sinclair self-assembly kit. After a back-and-forth with my parents, finally convinced them to get an Atari 400, though they really hated the membrane keyboard making it seem like a toy than a serious machine. That was the best thing I ever got. All I had was the BASIC cartridge, Asteroids cartridge, and the intro to basic that came with it. I had no storage--that…
High school in the 80s, I wanted to get the $50 Timex Sinclair self-assembly kit. After a back-and-forth with my parents, finally convinced them to get an Atari 400, though they really hated the membrane keyboard making it seem like a toy than a serious machine. That was the best thing I ever got. All I had was the BASIC cartridge, Asteroids cartridge, and the intro to basic that came with it. I had no storage--that…
I have pretty much the same story, started with a Vic20 (without storage), got the 4K expansion cartridge when my programs stated to exceed the builtin 3.5k, moved on to the Apple 2 and the Commodore 64 and then on to PCs. Mostly learning in basic and then I was doing a lot of dBase in the mid to late 80's, learned C & Fortran in HS and then I learned C, Fortran, PAscal and Assembler in college. The on to VB, C++ and…
Sinclair ZX81. First using its built-in BASIC. Curiosity about what made it tick, combined with a 'need for speed' got me into Z80 assembly. At one point used this puny machine to compute the digits of one of the largest Mersenne primes then-known to science (mid or late 80s). Not find that number of course, just produce a decimal representation of it. On its successor, the ZX Spectrum, I got into cracking copy prote…
Removing protection started out being easy, but over time got pretty complex. I remember the various Speedlock protections quite fondly, with their various decryption routines layered upon top of each other.