Re:A Great Old Timey Game Programming Hack (2013)
by geitir on Saturday October 13, 2018 @10:19AM
(#18208057)
As a 24 year old currently hobbiest programmer (looking to change that), I was able to follow along and really enjoyed this article. Anything I can learn technical and close to the "bare metal" I get immense satisfaction from. I have however had experience with registers and contiguous memory etc while working on a fat32 usb interface in C with libusb during my undergrad research. I think a lot of this puzzle-like nature lives on in protocols. That said I definitely agree that spare time is a factor for things like this. At least in the professional world considering the speed of development and computers themselves.
Re:A Great Old Timey Game Programming Hack (2013)
by JD557 on Saturday October 13, 2018 @08:23AM
(#18207613)
I think that the young generation might still relate to this story. Hacks have changed, but they still exist.
The difference is that now, instead of looking for a particular CPU instruction, you'll look at hidden instructions in you JIT bytecode or ways to trick your sandbox (browser?) to let you use the GPU.
Re:A Great Old Timey Game Programming Hack (2013)
by kleiba on Saturday October 13, 2018 @08:33AM
(#18207641)
But that's kind of my point: naturally, there are still "hacks" around, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But as much as the nature of coding has changed, so has the nature of the hacks. I still wonder how easy it is for someone who grew up with IDEs, frameworks/libraries, and StackOverflow to relate to an old-time story like the one above. Sure, you can relate to the general feeling of "something is in the way of me reaching my goal, is there a clever way around it?" but to me, a lot of the "magic" inherent in the older hacks is different from today's. Can that old-time magic still be felt by a kid of today when reading a story like this one?
Re:A Great Old Timey Game Programming Hack (2013)
by m_mueller on Saturday October 13, 2018 @08:31AM
(#18207636)
Still somewhat alive in HPC and maybe embedded (outside mass market mobile chips).
Re:A Great Old Timey Game Programming Hack (2013)
by gmueckl on Saturday October 13, 2018 @12:15PM
(#18208665)
For the longest time, embedded development required some low level work that was quite comparable to game programming hacks of that era. But I see that microcontrollers are getting more powerful and compilers have become really good, so that only few applications require hacks like these anymore.
I don't know how accessibly it is to the young guns today but one thing this story manages to elicit very well is the general zeitgeist I experienced myself during those days. Mind you, I was never as advanced a programmer as the author and his friend were. But the description of "facing a problem caused by the restricted architecture of the machine your working on, the puzzle-like search for a work-around, and simply just having the spare time to dedicate to a project" are memories I know very well too.
Unfortunately, this feeling really is a memory. Coding has changed so much since the days of the 6502 or 6509, it's a completely different ball game. That's why I wrote above, I don't know if those who haven't been there can relate to the story very much, other than it reading like a peculiarity. But it sure is a nice -- and even suspenseful! -- read for an old-timer like me.