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Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

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Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#41

Post by brown9-2 »

drblast wrote: post #31
nkassis wrote: post #5

My advice would have been to reinvent the wheel. Yeah it might not add to anything useful but there is an off chance it could. The reason why reinventing the wheel is good is that you have direction as to what you should implement. Trying to do something new all the time isn't possible. I used to build tic tac toe games It was never complete or useful but it helped me learn the tech I was using. Now days creating a b…

One of the coolest programs I ever made was a tic-tac-toe with an AI that learned the optimal strategy by playing itself over and over. I wrote that in the process of learning Lisp, which made writing the program easy, and I got to exercise a lot of the language features. What was so cool about it was watching it learn, and realizing that unless I programmed it to make random mistakes, it would settle for sub-optimal…

An aside, but in case you weren't aware of it, I believe the AI strategy you describe is known as "simulated annealing".

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#42

Post by ido »

billswift wrote: post #22
jacobolus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enough experience to make a tic-tac-toe game? No time like the present to try!

I have never done any graphics at all. All I know is bash and some awk and perl, mostly for text processing. I keep planning to learn more, which is why I read about it a bit, and browse HN, but I have too many other things I want to do too.

It's actually really easy to do simple 2d graphics, you can probably learn how to draw 2d rects/circles/etc on the screen in 10 minutes.

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#43

Post by orangecat »

orblivion wrote: post #30
zephyrfalcon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that is the one the (relative) dangers when you are proficient in a language; it is so much easier and faster to write something in the language you already know, rather than having to learn everything from scratch. Of course, it also depends on how much difference there is between old and new languages; a Python expert could probably pick up Ruby in no time, and vice versa; but Python vs Haskell is a differ…

Python is particularly cozy, I think. It picks up things from other languages, so I don't think there's much it can't do reasonably well.

Yeah, Python is my Blub. I know I should learn stuff like Haskell and Clojure, but I just haven't come across any cases where it's more than a minor inconvenience to make Python do what I need.

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#44

Post by awfulcoder14 »

djhworld wrote: post #38

I think I suffer from this problem, I like to compare it to writers block or something like that, my problem is that I want to develop something but I don't know what and get frustrated at having a lack of ideas. This frustration then gets interspersed with furious bouts of development on personal projects that can last 4-6 weeks, and then I go back to another 3 months of doing nothing and hitting my head against a b…

(Warning: somewhat spam)

I'm trying to make a website to solve this: http://somebodybuildthis.com

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#46

Post by silentbicycle »

brown9-2 wrote: post #41
drblast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the coolest programs I ever made was a tic-tac-toe with an AI that learned the optimal strategy by playing itself over and over. I wrote that in the process of learning Lisp, which made writing the program easy, and I got to exercise a lot of the language features. What was so cool about it was watching it learn, and realizing that unless I programmed it to make random mistakes, it would settle for sub-optimal…

An aside, but in case you weren't aware of it, I believe the AI strategy you describe is known as "simulated annealing".

It's simulated annealing specifically when you start with more tolerance for unfavorable random mistakes, then gradually move toward only accepting random variation that improves.

If you haven't already, check out _Essentials of Metaheuristics_ (http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/metaheuristics/), a free textbook / set of lecture notes. :)

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#48

Post by wtracy »

alanh wrote: post #23

Summary: “You should be motivated in the same manner that I am.” Er, what’s wrong with someone looking to non-specifically contribute something to a movement (GNU/Linux) or to improve their skills in a particular language? Not anything, necessarily; they’re probably just young.

The point is that with the given strategy, the developer won't be able to contribute anything meaningful to their pet movement. They might learn something, but they won't create something useful.

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#49

Post by wtracy »

fady wrote: post #25

fresh, eager, programmers should jump into any project that interests them, regardless if its personal or public.

Indeed.

I get the urge as much as anyone else to "build something new and cool" (spend enough time Googling me and you'll see I'm pretty guilty of this) but I think FOSS would be farther along if fewer people tried to start their own projects and instead contributed to existing projects.

Re: Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers

#50

Post by daychilde »

awfulcoder14 wrote: post #44
djhworld wrote: post #38

I think I suffer from this problem, I like to compare it to writers block or something like that, my problem is that I want to develop something but I don't know what and get frustrated at having a lack of ideas. This frustration then gets interspersed with furious bouts of development on personal projects that can last 4-6 weeks, and then I go back to another 3 months of doing nothing and hitting my head against a b…

(Warning: somewhat spam) I'm trying to make a website to solve this: http://somebodybuildthis.com

You (and others) may be interested in this reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis
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