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PleasureBonBon Forum -> PleasureBonBon.com Discussions  ~  Tursi gets a new Royal Member Avatar!
Tursi
PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:52 am  Reply with quote
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Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Posts: 648

JohnnyPsycho wrote:
Don't feel bad about being "invisible", Cap'n, even I haven't found the time or energy to post in here everyday like I used to. I haven't even bothered looking at the RP threads... so really, we're both in the same boat (sorry, pun not intended... really!)

Also, I think you did a fantastic job creating your character's background, etc. I can tell you from experience, I had to do a LOT of research for my own fursona's background info, and Johnny Six-Killer the gunslinger is, obviously, nothing like the real me either...


Thanks, Johnny, you're definately one of the founding members of the forum and it's good to see you pop up when you can! I think your character inspired a lot of people, and that's testimony to the effort you invested into him.

We just need to get all the old-timers together for a game a of cards, so we can reminesce about the good old days! Wink

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Tursi
PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:55 am  Reply with quote
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Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Posts: 648

Avrie000 wrote:
Congrats Captain, May you always have red sunsets and ample grog ... just don't bet your ship at the casino Wink


Hehe.. my employers would not be too pleased if I did that! Fortunately, they don't let me take the ship with me on leave!

May your sails be full and your bilge be dry! Wink

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AlainDaishar
PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 6:16 pm  Reply with quote
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Joined: 23 Oct 2009
Posts: 288

Quote:
On the plus side, you don't HAVE to do a lot of that these days, and you can make a living as a high level programmer.

BUT.. you will be a much BETTER programmer if you take the time to learn what's going on under the hood - and assembly is the best way to come to terms with that. But it definately can take a while to wrap your head around.


Yea, I've always had that kind of feeling. I've never enjoyed not knowing what happens behind the scenes. Because if something goes wrong, I want to be able to fix it myself, in any situation, whether its a computer, or a stove. (Besides, eating cold food every night would be a bummer).

The articles that you were thinking of publishing, would would they cover? An intro to programming in general?

Because when I started (my understanding now is not that much better) all the books that I had looked at would mention whether this thing or that was mutable and the benefits of. And I spent half my time wondering what the hell the things were in the first place, let alone the benefits and disadvantages of them being mutable.

Thankfully, I think I'm past that stage...........

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Tursi
PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 6:36 am  Reply with quote
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Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Posts: 648

AlainDaishar wrote:
Yea, I've always had that kind of feeling. I've never enjoyed not knowing what happens behind the scenes. Because if something goes wrong, I want to be able to fix it myself, in any situation, whether its a computer, or a stove. (Besides, eating cold food every night would be a bummer).


heh... very true. In truth most modern high end machines are difficult to program in assembly - partially because they are no longer designed with that concept in mind and partially because they are enormously complicated inside. Once you add in the concepts of pipelining, multiple levels of cache, predictive execution, and all the many other features that are being crammed onto the silicon, it's very difficult to write code that keeps all this in mind.

A good programmer can still beat a compiler, though, there's just a lot more to remember on a Pentium 4 than, say, a 6502. Wink

But knowing at least the concepts that the processor is using will even help your high level code, though you also need to consider what the compiler will do to translate it. When you have a problem to solve, you always have multiple ways to approach it. Understanding the hardware will help you choose which approach to develop.

I'm trying to speak really generally, I have a feeling that I may be too vague now, and not make any sense. Wink

Quote:
The articles that you were thinking of publishing, would would they cover? An intro to programming in general?


Yeah, but a fully hands-on one. I have visions of it growing from "what is a bit?" to a fairly complete course -- but it's hard for me to find time (taking a note to take this on my next overseas travel, though).

I'm taking a very different approach from any of the books or courses I've seen -- which of course means that I may be completely out in left field, we'll see when I'm brave enough to publish the first bit. The first document (chapter, maybe) talks about how a computer works, and makes the reader write their first code -- and execute it by hand on paper. I used to do that a lot and found it pretty useful Wink -- and the fact that I still sometimes "run" a procedure on paper tells me it may still be. The second one moves that knowledge to a real machine - albeit a classic - and lets you write real assembly language code and see it run (through a web-based emulator). The goal is that the third one guides through writing something more visually interesting before moving on.

Starting at a low level like this, I hope to do two things. One is to provide a base foundation in how the machine works. This is something I see sorely lacking in people coming into the industry. At the same time, a lot of courses describe how computers work at pointlessly low levels. It may be handy to understand a transistor if you are building a computer, but it doesn't do much when programming it, so I am tailoring to the programmer level. I'm bypassing the toggle switch era, though, as though it was kind of neat, I feel it's more novelty than value today.

The second thing is to provide a logical progression that more or less mirrors the actual development of computer programming. From assembly to interpreted languages to compiled languages, I want enough foundation to describe why each works and think about the strengths and weaknesses thereof. This is actually a bit different to how most people twenty eyars ago learned programming - most of us started with some form of interpreted language (usually BASIC), and then moved down to assembly. I feel the other direction may allow faster growth.

We'll see. Smile I've talked more about my vaporware now than I'm usually comfortable doing - the 'course' may never come to completion.

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