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Ask HN: What do you code when learning a new language/framework?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you code when learning a new language/framework?

#71

Post by mikercampbell »

bavarianbob wrote: post #58
mikercampbell wrote: post #56

Pokemon games!! All of the algebra is solved, and you can dig as deeply as you like in any direction you like. Graphics? Check. And simple, top down, tilesheet or character maps work just fine. Battles? Check. You can leverage anything from purely functional, object oriented, websocket, long polling, SQL, you name it. Whether you use 3 elemental types or flesh out everything from multiturn, semivulnerable, exp/leveli…

Is there a tutorial for the boilerplate for setting this up? Where would I even begin as someone who has never built any graphics.

As for nitty gritty graphics, I highly recommend https://pikuma.com. They have free and paid courses, and go into a lot of the in-depth aspects you wouldn't get from using a web framework like I typically do.

As for game mechanics, Wikipedia is a surprisingly solid resource. I mean, it's expected that these things are covered, but the depth is amazing. Check out this page for example!

https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Damage

For in depth game mechanics, I'd check out Dragonfly Cave, as they cover so much of it, too!

https://www.dragonflycave.com/

To study the ROM, and how the 1st Gen games work, I recommend this article, which covers the mechanics of the bit level organization of the first games

https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue27/glitch

I would love to make a game that compiles down to almost nothing like GameFreak initially did.

Re: Ask HN: What do you code when learning a new language/framework?

#74

Post by mbreese »

daxfohl wrote: post #61
dmoy wrote: post #4

The thing that my job is requiring me to do. Trial by fire. But also after the 4th or 5th language and Nth framework, it gets much quicker to pick up new ones.

This, but also I like to at least have a Hello World console app (or API server or web page or database reader or whatever the bare minimum is) that I can play around with and know that I can create something from scratch and not be entirely at the mercy of whatever the work infrastructure is. But I also agree with the last sentence. When you are just starting out in your career, it's nice to have something more comp…

The default used to be a blog engine. It's a complex enough web app that you can learn how web servers and database access work in the language/framework. But it's also easy enough that you don't need to spend a lot of time on a data model.

The benefit is that the design of a blog web app is going to be very similar in a variety of languages that you can compare different frameworks/languages pretty easily. The downside is that if your language is better at non-webapp things, it's not going to be an easy exercise.

Re: Ask HN: What do you code when learning a new language/framework?

#78

Post by zabzonk »

beej71 wrote: post #76

A text adventure. Touches data structures, parsing, data representation. And then you get to have fun picking up the lamp and dropping it somewhere else. :)

Even better, a text adventure writing system. Doing that was how I learned C++, yea many years ago.

Re: Ask HN: What do you code when learning a new language/framework?

#79

Post by bigiain »

A long time back, for me it was Wolfenstein-style 2.5D rendering. I first wrote it in Perl 4 - MacPerl using quicktime (quickdraw?) on a pre-OSX Mac (System 9 probably). Just a "move around in a space" type demo rather than a game. The "2.5D" referred to the tricks that let you go up and down stairs/ramps, but you could never go above or below another navigable space.

Rewrote it in at least Java (applet and standalone), Z80 assembler, Pascal, PHP, Python, JavaScript, C - and from memory gave up and failed to get it working in 486 assembler and 68k assembler.

It's been at least 10 or 15 years since I tried. Maybe I need to see if I still have the chops to get it working on Arduino or RP2040 or something...

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