i_c_b

11 ms·

31.
by i_c_b 3y ago
Let me make the case that it's definitely not just nostalgia - or, at least, that Quake style movement didn't fade away because of any objective, rational process. One of the exasperating consequences of the rise of game engines h
32.
by i_c_b 3y ago
I've long been fascinated by the intense role of path dependency in what technologies and art styles get really explored and mapped out in connection with computers, and I think Flash is a magnificent example of that in action. Until F
33.
by i_c_b 10y ago
Glad to see this article making the rounds again. Here's a little background to the article that might be interesting to some of you, concerning the evolution of shooters. I'm the Nathan McKenzie the blog author thanks at the end
34.
by i_c_b 12y ago
Do you prefer the C library interface for working on strings to the way that Java handles them, then? After all, Java allows statements like "string3 = string1 + string2;", which is much more ambiguous than C's "strcpy(
35.
by i_c_b 13y ago
My favorite "1 not behaving as a prime" example. Here are two simple javascript functions: function f(n,k){ var t = 0; for( var j = 2; j <= n; j++ )t += 1/k - f(n/j, k+1); return t;} function p(n){ r
36.
by i_c_b 13y ago
When I was working at a game dev studio on a game that partially took place in a city, we had an artist, looking for photo reference, type in "man hole" in the google image search. The resulting photo reference, in addition to bei
37.
by i_c_b 13y ago
One nasty aspect of the advice "Don't reinvent solutions to common problems" is it doesn't really provide a way to tell when your problem is really, truly a common problem, which can be a lot more subtle than you might t
38.
by i_c_b 13y ago
Given what you've written, I have my own doubts about your understanding too. Unfortunately, that and your proactive psychoanalysis of me are not interesting conversation topics.
39.
by i_c_b 13y ago
BUT clearly there is a world of difference between saying "it would be nice to have char* + char* as a short hand for string concatenation somehow" - which is roughly what I was saying - versus saying "all operators in a lang
40.
by i_c_b 13y ago
C is willing to hide a lot of numeric type casting details about doubles vs floats vs unsigned ints vs chars behind the magic of the "+" character, so maybe you're willing to endure a lot more type-dependent compiler magic th
41.
by i_c_b 13y ago
Well, to be fair, strings are much nicer to work with when you have a suitable overload for '+', and that very much is a problem with C the language. Same goes for 3d vectors in C as well.
42.
by i_c_b 13y ago
I assume when he says "no simple excuse", it's more pointing to the massive problems that the mere existence of the macro pre-processor introduces for reasoning about the text of any C or C++ program, for programmers, tools,
43.
by i_c_b 13y ago
I've observed something kind of similar, although in my view, the axis is, if you rely on abstracted rules and disembodied systems and institutions, you tend to be liberal, whereas if you rely on much more on tightly shared unstated no
44.
by i_c_b 13y ago
I wish more comments engaged his actual argument. Here, there's a lot of "Torvalds is a jerk and unprofessional" versus "Blunt is good, and screw the PC police talk!" That's not his argument. Torvalds is sayi
45.
by i_c_b 13y ago
Huh. It's like he's saying (because of libraries in the web browser) that we should be benchmarking HTML5 the way that we would a C64 or an Amiga 500... not as a general purpose machine that can implement arbitrary algorithms, bu
46.
by i_c_b 13y ago
There are lots of ways to approach this topic, but here's my favorite, because it doesn't rely on definitions, just arithmetic... Javascript: function q(n,k){ var t = 0; for( var j = 2; j <= n; j++ )t += 1/k - q(Math.floor
47.
by i_c_b 15y ago
The question is in honest, good faith. The progressive era followed the era of robber barons. There was even more wealth asymmetry in America then than now. Something happened to make that transition take place, something cultural, someth
48.
by i_c_b 15y ago
I don't have answers about any of this; really, I just having growing questions. I don't disagree with you. Particularly with 2-income professional families (or ambitious younger people in challenging jobs like startups), there clearly is
49.
by i_c_b 15y ago
By my understanding of things, in the 50's, the civil rights movement was extremely tactical about where they choose to have boycotts and protests, actively targeting certain Southern communities and leaders that they knew would be particul
50.
by i_c_b 15y ago
Is it sad? If someone bought a car and then complained that it wasn't taking care of all their transportation needs, but they never learned how to drive and didn't expect that they would have to do the work of driving, we would (rightly) sa
51.
by i_c_b 15y ago
I think Quake's code represents a design methodology you almost never see in the wild. Essentially, Quake's code operates on the same principles that Apple's physical interface designs do (or perhaps singular programming language designs l
52.
by i_c_b 15y ago
I think by Doom3 id had reached a point where they needed a team of programmers, rather than Carmack + programmers orbiting Carmack. And so Doom3 represents their transition to dealing with all the software engineering / communication issu
53.
by i_c_b 15y ago
I worked on Quake4 as a programmer for a bit over a year, though little of my work ended up in the final game. The Doom3 engine is mostly C++. If I recall correctly, the renderer still looked more like a blend of C with some C++ slowly dri
54.
by i_c_b 15y ago
I used to feel exactly the same way you do... but to be honest, over time, I'd say these kinds of conversations have actually gradually affected my viewpoint. I agree that the conversations, _in the comments_, never seem to resolve, but nev
55.
by i_c_b 15y ago
My hunch is that they had to cartoon up the expenses a bit because a more realisitic version would have had cheaper prices but probably x10 the number of economic transactions, which would have bogged the game down. Same with the amount of
56.
by i_c_b 15y ago
As long as Adobe can find ways to help steer an awful lot of what is great about Flash into the HTML5 space (with tools and process to support it), then it's all to the good. I get a bit exasperated reading all the HTML5 boosters who, for u
57.
by i_c_b 15y ago
Just have to chime in with one more "Quake changed my life", though perhaps even more so than most - loving Doom to death, I was _utterly_ obsessed with Quake modding and map making. Then I sensibly dropped out of college in 1997 and went
58.
by i_c_b 16y ago
Look up blog posts by Mark Guzdial. He's a very thoughtful, reflective CS educator who has written quite a bit about students learning to program. I can't remember where he wrote about it, but apparently, 1) students can use other people's
59.
by i_c_b 16y ago
Why do you think D&D calls hobbits halflings, and ents treants? TSR has a vexed history with Tolkien's estate.
60.
by i_c_b 16y ago
There ought to be a rating somewhere about how wildly a company tends to veer, and how often, when corporate re-strategizing kicks in, specifically in regards to APIs and deployment. MS in particular seems to be pretty schizoid that way, a

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