Sorry to ask but, what do you and the author refer to with 'demos'?
Re:F***ing Learn to Code Again (1999)
by lelandbatey on Monday March 23, 2015 @03:26PM
(#9252859)
I'll quote wikipedia here:
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture that specializes
in producing demos: small, self-contained computer programs that produce
audio-visual presentations. The main goal of a demo is to show off
programming, artistic, and musical skills.
If you want to watch some of the demos you can check out http://www.demoscene.tv/
Re:F***ing Learn to Code Again (1999)
by Audiophilip on Monday March 23, 2015 @05:43PM
(#9253523)
Please don't. demoscene.tv is extremely outdated. Youtube is full of excellent quality 60fps video captures of demos. Here's a link to get started: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=60fps+demoscene
I found that site hard to navigate, and a bit outdated.
For anyone who want a very spesific example of how cool demos can be, here are some of my favorites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXMs54NUBOI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYpKnl1B_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO6dtjxbHzs
Going to see these demo-competitons in Norway in my childhood was certainly a big inspiration to learn coding.
On a side note: the rise of the 1k, 4k and 8k sub-"scenes" is likely a response, create artificial constraints to enable creativity.
I think the JS k demos are pretty interesting to say the least... it's amazing what can be done with a few K.. though the original vs. final code doesn't always bear much resemblance.
The point is, too many people don't spend any* time thinking of how what they write is inefficient or not... Even mobile devices are becoming mobile powerhouses. It's a bit of a shame really.
The reason for that is that demo programming is the coding equivalent of watch making: extremely precise, technical work that takes deep knowledge and long hours to achieve something notable. Knowing your tools and platform inside out is a necessity - and the more modern your CPU/GPU are, the less realistic that is. When I was writing assembly for my 8MHz z80, I could easily hold the full instruction set + CPU register layout etc in working memory. When you're working on a modern i7 + GTX780, that's pretty much impossible, and you have to resort to abstraction layers and tools that inevitably lead to the situation described by the author of the article. It's a classic case of extreme restraints working in the favor of creativity.
Interestingly enough, my few friends who are still into coding demos don't do it on modern architectures - they're mostly sticking to the C64.