T w e n t y S i d e d

Early in the project I said (hopefully here on the blog) that one of my goals for the project was to leave the door open for porting to linux. I might release a linux version or I might not, but I wanted the option and that meant I needed to keep the codebase free of Microsoft-specific code.

I’ve been working on Microsoft platforms for my entire professional life. In fact, my history with C begins at the same time as my history with Microsoft. In 1990, my uncle passed along his old IBM running Microsoft DOS, along with an old edition of Borland Turbo C. For you kids saying “C is hard to learn”, I just want to point out that I did it with no teacher and no internet*. I didn’t even have a textbook. Just the Borland reference manuals. In hardcopy. (What? Store an ENTIRE BOOK on disk? That’s crazy talk! You’d need industrial-grade hard drives to store something that big!) All the insane hours I’ve poured into this language, and I’ve never done so outside the context of a Microsoft operating system.

* It IS friggin’ hard to learn and I probably could have learned it ten times faster with the proper materials. Start with something easier.

But check this out:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Good Robot 24: Portability”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I didn’t add much in the way of new stuff this week. I spent a lot of time refining and polishing and bug-fixing, hoping to get a new build out to my testers^* before the weekend. I’m spending a lot of time fussing with stuff I’ve already written about.

* For the record: I’m SLOWLY adding to my list of testers. I know people will get sick of playing the same broken game week after week, so I’m trying to add new people as the old ones lose interest.

So! Let’s talk about something controversial. Even better: Let’s talk about something incredibly controversial to programmers, and completely tedious, esoteric, and impenetrable to non-coders! Let’s talk about programming paradigms. Some people have asked about how my program is structured, and since I know the answer will leave some people deeply offended, I might as well discuss the “why” before I get to the “what”.

Just to bring normal people up to speed:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Good Robot 23: Programming Paradigms”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.