I dunno, I think software engineers and security consultants can find solace and joy in the glider. Its not inherently showy or dumb, its just elegant. In fact, the glider should appeal more to the "real hackers" we're discussing and less to the script kiddies. The script kiddie hacker symbol would be something like "01010101" or "1337H4X"
The Hacker Emblem, the glider, has as much to do with computer hacking as anything else. What the hell? Get off your high horse. Who made you grand poobah of hacking?
There is no more elegant representation of the complexities and the elegance of hacking than the glider.
I have never, ever, once in my life seen someone break something that was important deliberately. when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
Have you never heard of a DDOS attack? Do you have any concept of how many people try to hack websites "for the lulz" ??
It may not SOLELY have been to break something important, but it was directly to break something important, so as to cause the consequences of having lost something important.
And for the exact same reason, it might be profitable for Russia or China or somebody to brick the rover. To break something important to us. Not PURELY to break something important, just "mwahahaha we destroyed the US's rover, they're going to cry!" but rather to see that US advancement is slowed so their countries can catch up.
That's like saying "Why do people go to war? Just for the sake of shooting people and capturing land?" Well, YES, actually, but there's more to it.
Actually I think every/. reader already thought about the ideas of the summary least I did. Briefly, then thinking "it's probably encrypted" and not bothering further.
Yup! I can confirm I did exactly this!:D
So... is it encrypted? I mean, it has to be, right? Russia or China could try to screw with us otherwise.
For me, probably Children of the Mind, the last book of the original Ender's Game series.
I wrote about several moments, but they're all spoilers. So I'll just include this one, as generic as I can make it. This scene was so hard to read, I had to stop and put the book down for awhile.
A man has to convince the woman he truly loves that he doesn't love her at all, so that she'll be willing to sacrifice herself to save the lives of a planet.
Read the sequels, they're far, far sadder. But wow, SO good. It blows my mind everybody just reads the first book, they love that wunderkind goes to school, saves the world Harry Potter style story, but the later books where he grows up get REALLY deep and philosophical... You need to read them.
You're inferring and assuming a lot, which I disagree that he implied. Yes, he says at the end he would like to get into game development, so that would be an eventual goal, but he starts off just saying he used to know some code, he wants to get back into coding, how should he start, etc.
I say that you're way, way off. Its very clear the guy wants to be a programmer. And if he does, doing what you've said would be disastrous.
Zork is about as simple as a game can get (from a programming complexity standpoint) and that still requires a pretty solid understanding of programming to pull off.
Please provide a counterexample. Something "simpler than pong".
Text based blackjack, I guess. That's really as easy as you can get and still call it a "game", and again, that requires all sorts of things someone just starting out isn't going to know how to approach. So the end result is tons of copy & paste coding. That's where bad habits come from.
You start with hello, world (not a game), then you do 99 bottles of beer (not a game), a calculator (not a game), and other simple management programs (vending machine software) until you're very comfortable, then you can move on to things that are games.
There's no shortcuts. Don't try to make games yet, anybody talking about games is taking entirely the wrong approach.
Pick any language. If you understand the basics of programming properly, and don't just copy & paste code, then you'll be able to transition to any other language trivially. I moved from Java to C++, C#, Python, Ruby, BASIC, etc. all with VERY, VERY little time to learn the syntax differences. Its just not an issue.
So DO NOT worry about language. Pick a language (I reccomend Python or Ruby, less cruft) and code in it. Just get some basic stuff working. Read some books or read some tutorials online, it doesn't really matter. Write sort programs, write echo programs, write 99 bottles of beer on the wall, write zork, write mario.
In 1-3 years you can worry about iOS or XBOX development, I'm sorry but you're just not anywhere near where that would be feasible yet. But that said, you can transition to that kind of work from ANYTHING, so don't worry about what you do now, just do something. Get comfortable with code, and please,
TAKE YOUR TIME AND LEARN THE BASICS. The importance of fundamentals in programming CANNOT be overstated.
If you're just learning programming to start with (OP isn't completely new, but may as well be) then trying to think about the Xbox is a terrible idea.
Its going to be YEARS until you're ready to code for the xbox, even xbox live arcade. XNA 3D APIs are no walk in the park. There's so many thousands of little headaches to worry about, you need to have your programming fundamentals down ROCK SOLID.
He should really just take any language (Python, Ruby, Java, C#) and write a hello world. Then a 99 bottles of beer program. Then a calculator. Then Zork.
Months later he can hopefully make pong, and then tetris.
Its going to be years until you're ready for XNA.
I say this not to ruin dreams, but to prepare you. Unrealistic expectations set you up for failure, and encourage you to do things the wrong way (copy & paste). Much, much better to set your goals more realistically, and then take your time, meet them, and understand the process.
I would be careful with jumping in on games. Lots of people don't know how to properly deconstruct a problem like a developer yet, and you'll almost assuredly end up biting off more than you can hope of chewing. He's totally new, he's not even sure what programming language to start yet, and he's dealing with handicaps. I don't think trying to get a game going is a good idea at all. That sort of unrealistic expectations is why we have so many programmers who just copy & paste to get through their assignments and never learn anything.
Tic tac toe is okay... but you should start with command line, and command line tic tac toe is pretty wonky.
I would say something like Zork first. A really, really simple text-based game. You can walk north or south, and maybe you can "look" or "use" things.
Definitely 2D and 3D graphics are right out, until you learn to use APIs.
Really, this is the wrong approach. That's later, when he's learned some and wants to start applying it. Right now he should start with Hello World, then write a sort program, then write some string manipulation, text based calculator, program that prints out 99 bottles of beer on the wall, etc.
Because that's pretty terrible advice. If you don't know the programming language you're working in, trying to make even pong is going to be a gigantic headache and probably going to force you to do a lot of copy & paste coding; which doesn't teach you anything.
Games are insanely complicated. Don't get me started on 3D.
Once he's got a really strong grip on a language, and some graphics libraries, then sure, he should try gaming. But he isn't NEARLY there yet.
If there is no cost to do so, or it is less than the work done by allowing the two to re-equalize through a heat engine, then you have a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.
But you're missing my point. That was everything; there IS a cost to doing so, its just a cost to the greater system that you aren't observing.
There's no cost to the system of the particles, but the overall earth which is supplying that Brownian Motion has resistance and loses energy.
The entire Earth is a system of converting the temperature energy and radiation from the sun into information density and higher order.
If you look at the Earth as an isolated system, it violates the laws of Thermodynamics. If you consider the entire universe, it is absolutely consistent.
They say themselves that they derive the energy from Brownian motion.
Ergo, they're simply taking energy out of the larger system.
Hey guys, guess what? If you look at only the Earth itself, it violates the laws of thermodynamics all over the place. THAT ISN'T HOW THERMODYNAMICS WORKS. You have to consider THE ENTIRE system. The earth only works by feeding off the constant output of the sun, so it doesn't violate thermodynamics.
Similarly, this may generate an increased local temperature, but the larger system balances out.
Yeah, this is a total load of crap. I'm surprised since apparently MIT is involved, they know their physics.
Somebody is trying to connect the dots who doesn't understand all what's going on.
They're not taking the entire system into consideration at all. At best this allows you to transfer heat from one object to another, or make one side of an object warm while another side is cold, a temperature dipole so to speak. That's not a violation of thermodynamics at all, the two still have the same net energy as they did before. Even if you didn't spend any energy to separate them, it doesn't matter, no net energy has been gained. One side is only gaining temperature by pulling it from either the other side, or the environment.
Its using Brownian Motion to generate the energy, so its taking energy out of the larger system. They're cooling the Earth every so slightly.
WHAT THE HELL USPTO? Who is working there? Do they just rubber stamp everything?!
How is there not already prior art for this? The iPhone alone has hundreds, THOUSANDS of apps which already do this.
There is absolutely nothing involved in this patent that is not trivial and ALREADY IMPLEMENTED.
This is a patent which absolutely, unequivocally should have been denied.
Freaking patent system in this country is a joke. We need tort reform immediately. This is way out of hand.
So, what, now MS gets to sue every mobile app developer in the world?
Rottentomatoes rating is not a rating of how good a movie is. Rather, it is how likely you are to enjoy it. It is a probability!!
A movie with 10% on rottentomatoes doesn't mean its a movie worth a 10 grade, it means that only a niche audience enjoyed. So you're less likely to be part of that 10%, but its absolutely possible you still love the film, for very specific reasons. Similarly, a movie with a 98% rating isn't necessarily the best movie or a very high quality film, it just means that a large portion of the population will find it enjoyable overall.
If you treat metacritic the same way, there's nothing wrong at all.
Sorry, I went a little too far. Its hard to judge tone of voice from a line of text. I read a bunch of comments to this effect and I felt like it was semi-serious, lots of people seem to have that sentiment, that "well you shouldn't be eating fast food in france anyways!" like that has anything to do with the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough.
I dunno, I think software engineers and security consultants can find solace and joy in the glider. Its not inherently showy or dumb, its just elegant. In fact, the glider should appeal more to the "real hackers" we're discussing and less to the script kiddies. The script kiddie hacker symbol would be something like "01010101" or "1337H4X"
in reality anyone who first calls them self a hacker, before others label them, more than likely isn't.
Oh absolutely, I said myself elsewhere that nobody calls themselves hackers except script kiddies.
The rest of us are software engineers or security consultants now.
The Hacker Emblem, the glider, has as much to do with computer hacking as anything else. What the hell? Get off your high horse. Who made you grand poobah of hacking?
There is no more elegant representation of the complexities and the elegance of hacking than the glider.
I have never, ever, once in my life seen someone break something that was important deliberately. when did you see someone break something important just for the sake of it?
Have you never heard of a DDOS attack? Do you have any concept of how many people try to hack websites "for the lulz" ??
O_O
It may not SOLELY have been to break something important, but it was directly to break something important, so as to cause the consequences of having lost something important.
And for the exact same reason, it might be profitable for Russia or China or somebody to brick the rover. To break something important to us. Not PURELY to break something important, just "mwahahaha we destroyed the US's rover, they're going to cry!" but rather to see that US advancement is slowed so their countries can catch up.
That's like saying "Why do people go to war? Just for the sake of shooting people and capturing land?" Well, YES, actually, but there's more to it.
Actually I think every /. reader already thought about the ideas of the summary least I did. Briefly, then thinking "it's probably encrypted" and not bothering further.
Yup! I can confirm I did exactly this! :D
So... is it encrypted? I mean, it has to be, right? Russia or China could try to screw with us otherwise.
For me, probably Children of the Mind, the last book of the original Ender's Game series.
;-;
I wrote about several moments, but they're all spoilers. So I'll just include this one, as generic as I can make it. This scene was so hard to read, I had to stop and put the book down for awhile.
A man has to convince the woman he truly loves that he doesn't love her at all, so that she'll be willing to sacrifice herself to save the lives of a planet.
I'm tearing up just thinking about it.
Read the sequels, they're far, far sadder. But wow, SO good. It blows my mind everybody just reads the first book, they love that wunderkind goes to school, saves the world Harry Potter style story, but the later books where he grows up get REALLY deep and philosophical... You need to read them.
You're inferring and assuming a lot, which I disagree that he implied. Yes, he says at the end he would like to get into game development, so that would be an eventual goal, but he starts off just saying he used to know some code, he wants to get back into coding, how should he start, etc.
I say that you're way, way off. Its very clear the guy wants to be a programmer. And if he does, doing what you've said would be disastrous.
I'm sorry, I thought this post was titled "Best Way To Jump Back Into Programming".
Oh yeah, I can see where I would get that, because THAT WAS THE TITLE.
Zork is about as simple as a game can get (from a programming complexity standpoint) and that still requires a pretty solid understanding of programming to pull off.
Please provide a counterexample. Something "simpler than pong".
Text based blackjack, I guess. That's really as easy as you can get and still call it a "game", and again, that requires all sorts of things someone just starting out isn't going to know how to approach. So the end result is tons of copy & paste coding. That's where bad habits come from.
You start with hello, world (not a game), then you do 99 bottles of beer (not a game), a calculator (not a game), and other simple management programs (vending machine software) until you're very comfortable, then you can move on to things that are games.
Never gonna happen, but a man can dream
There's no shortcuts. Don't try to make games yet, anybody talking about games is taking entirely the wrong approach.
Pick any language. If you understand the basics of programming properly, and don't just copy & paste code, then you'll be able to transition to any other language trivially. I moved from Java to C++, C#, Python, Ruby, BASIC, etc. all with VERY, VERY little time to learn the syntax differences. Its just not an issue.
So DO NOT worry about language. Pick a language (I reccomend Python or Ruby, less cruft) and code in it. Just get some basic stuff working. Read some books or read some tutorials online, it doesn't really matter. Write sort programs, write echo programs, write 99 bottles of beer on the wall, write zork, write mario.
In 1-3 years you can worry about iOS or XBOX development, I'm sorry but you're just not anywhere near where that would be feasible yet. But that said, you can transition to that kind of work from ANYTHING, so don't worry about what you do now, just do something. Get comfortable with code, and please,
TAKE YOUR TIME AND LEARN THE BASICS. The importance of fundamentals in programming CANNOT be overstated.
None of that remotely matters yet. This guy is JUST learning how to program from the beginning all over again.
He shouldn't be thinking about games projects yet, at all. That's massively unrealistic.
You start with any programming language, then write hello world, then write 99 bottles of beer, then write zork, then write pong, then write mario...
You won't be ready to even THINK about programming for Xbox or iOS for at least 1-2 years of programming. Seriously guys, this is really bad.
If you're just learning programming to start with (OP isn't completely new, but may as well be) then trying to think about the Xbox is a terrible idea.
Its going to be YEARS until you're ready to code for the xbox, even xbox live arcade. XNA 3D APIs are no walk in the park. There's so many thousands of little headaches to worry about, you need to have your programming fundamentals down ROCK SOLID.
He should really just take any language (Python, Ruby, Java, C#) and write a hello world. Then a 99 bottles of beer program. Then a calculator. Then Zork.
Months later he can hopefully make pong, and then tetris.
Its going to be years until you're ready for XNA.
I say this not to ruin dreams, but to prepare you. Unrealistic expectations set you up for failure, and encourage you to do things the wrong way (copy & paste). Much, much better to set your goals more realistically, and then take your time, meet them, and understand the process.
I would be careful with jumping in on games. Lots of people don't know how to properly deconstruct a problem like a developer yet, and you'll almost assuredly end up biting off more than you can hope of chewing. He's totally new, he's not even sure what programming language to start yet, and he's dealing with handicaps. I don't think trying to get a game going is a good idea at all. That sort of unrealistic expectations is why we have so many programmers who just copy & paste to get through their assignments and never learn anything.
Tic tac toe is okay... but you should start with command line, and command line tic tac toe is pretty wonky.
I would say something like Zork first. A really, really simple text-based game. You can walk north or south, and maybe you can "look" or "use" things.
Definitely 2D and 3D graphics are right out, until you learn to use APIs.
Really, this is the wrong approach. That's later, when he's learned some and wants to start applying it. Right now he should start with Hello World, then write a sort program, then write some string manipulation, text based calculator, program that prints out 99 bottles of beer on the wall, etc.
Because that's pretty terrible advice. If you don't know the programming language you're working in, trying to make even pong is going to be a gigantic headache and probably going to force you to do a lot of copy & paste coding; which doesn't teach you anything.
Games are insanely complicated. Don't get me started on 3D.
Once he's got a really strong grip on a language, and some graphics libraries, then sure, he should try gaming. But he isn't NEARLY there yet.
Don't put the cart before the horse.
If there is no cost to do so, or it is less than the work done by allowing the two to re-equalize through a heat engine, then you have a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.
But you're missing my point. That was everything; there IS a cost to doing so, its just a cost to the greater system that you aren't observing.
There's no cost to the system of the particles, but the overall earth which is supplying that Brownian Motion has resistance and loses energy.
The entire Earth is a system of converting the temperature energy and radiation from the sun into information density and higher order.
If you look at the Earth as an isolated system, it violates the laws of Thermodynamics. If you consider the entire universe, it is absolutely consistent.
This doesn't hardly break thermodynamics at all.
They say themselves that they derive the energy from Brownian motion.
Ergo, they're simply taking energy out of the larger system.
Hey guys, guess what? If you look at only the Earth itself, it violates the laws of thermodynamics all over the place. THAT ISN'T HOW THERMODYNAMICS WORKS. You have to consider THE ENTIRE system. The earth only works by feeding off the constant output of the sun, so it doesn't violate thermodynamics.
Similarly, this may generate an increased local temperature, but the larger system balances out.
Yeah, this is a total load of crap. I'm surprised since apparently MIT is involved, they know their physics.
Somebody is trying to connect the dots who doesn't understand all what's going on.
They're not taking the entire system into consideration at all. At best this allows you to transfer heat from one object to another, or make one side of an object warm while another side is cold, a temperature dipole so to speak. That's not a violation of thermodynamics at all, the two still have the same net energy as they did before. Even if you didn't spend any energy to separate them, it doesn't matter, no net energy has been gained. One side is only gaining temperature by pulling it from either the other side, or the environment.
Its using Brownian Motion to generate the energy, so its taking energy out of the larger system. They're cooling the Earth every so slightly.
Worse than that, games like the port of doom to iPhone ALREADY DO EXACTLY THIS.
WHAT THE HELL USPTO? Who is working there? Do they just rubber stamp everything?!
How is there not already prior art for this? The iPhone alone has hundreds, THOUSANDS of apps which already do this.
There is absolutely nothing involved in this patent that is not trivial and ALREADY IMPLEMENTED.
This is a patent which absolutely, unequivocally should have been denied.
Freaking patent system in this country is a joke. We need tort reform immediately. This is way out of hand.
So, what, now MS gets to sue every mobile app developer in the world?
Exactly, came here to say this.
Rottentomatoes rating is not a rating of how good a movie is. Rather, it is how likely you are to enjoy it. It is a probability!!
A movie with 10% on rottentomatoes doesn't mean its a movie worth a 10 grade, it means that only a niche audience enjoyed. So you're less likely to be part of that 10%, but its absolutely possible you still love the film, for very specific reasons. Similarly, a movie with a 98% rating isn't necessarily the best movie or a very high quality film, it just means that a large portion of the population will find it enjoyable overall.
If you treat metacritic the same way, there's nothing wrong at all.
Sorry, I went a little too far. Its hard to judge tone of voice from a line of text. I read a bunch of comments to this effect and I felt like it was semi-serious, lots of people seem to have that sentiment, that "well you shouldn't be eating fast food in france anyways!" like that has anything to do with the issue.