Twenty years later I wrote a Tetris again • Hacker News Board

Re: Twenty years later I wrote a Tetris again

#41

Post by baldfat » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 12:26 PM UTC

jasoncchild wrote: post #24

Fantastic! I had a similar experience in the mid 90s, though I wrote a Zork clone :)

I can't see how writing a Text Based Adventure as being enjoyable for the programmer unless you try to have people play it and watch them scratch their heads figuring out what to put in the door slot after "Put key in slot" and "Key feel through slot and is now behind a locked door."

Re: Twenty years later I wrote a Tetris again

#42

Post by cableshaft » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #7

I think any re-implementation of something you are fond of is a great exercise. It reminds me of a small project in undergrad for a networking course. Our professor's assignment for the quarter was to implement a basic TCP stack using the UDP protocol. It wasn't perfect and had quirks but it worked for a basic client/server model and gave me a huge appreciate for what happens when we use the internet. I think the hig…

> I think any re-implementation of something you are fond of is a great exercise.

That's basically how I learn new technology is to either partially or fully port my Proximity game (http://briancable.com/proximity) to it. I've used that to learn C#/XNA, Objective-C/iOS, Java/Kindle (sadly never finished, but it looked beautiful on a Kindle), and most recently Pico-8/Lua (still in the process). I'm planning to start working on a 3D version soon, as well, with the goal of getting stronger in my 3D programming and getting it onto a bunch of platforms with a single codebase (using Unity).

Considering the game has been used in at least one book (Actionscript 3 Design Patterns) as a 'learning to code' game and I periodically get emails from students whose teachers have made an A.I. programming exercise for Proximity, it probably makes sense that it's my go-to learn new tech game, considering I've made other games too but don't port any of those.

Re: Twenty years later I wrote a Tetris again

#43

Post by blockoperation » Mon, Oct 24, 2016, 7:00 PM UTC

vzaliva wrote: post #23

I've implemented Tetris 5 or 6 times over the period of 20+ years. This is my standard exercise to learn/try a new platform. I wrote one in C for custom smart phone/PDA prototype we were developing in 1994, then I wrote one in assembly for Zaurus PDA, another one little later for Palm Pilot, few more I do not even remember, and the last one 2 years ago to learn some OCaml (text-based and SDL versions) https://github.…

Tetris is my go-to learning project as well.

I can read all the tutorials in the world, but I don't feel comfortable with a new language/platform/toolkit/etc until I've ported Tetris to it.

I go as far as making every implementation replay-compatible for ease of testing (and also because it's just really satisfying watching half a dozen entirely different implementations of the same game running in frame-perfect harmony).

Right now I'm working on a Haskell port, and as a beginner to FP, it's quite a mind-bending experience trying to implement something so familiar in such an alien language.