trilinearnz (u/trilinearnz)

trilinearnz commented on Ask HN: Is it burnout or something else, and how can I recover? · Posted by u/modestcaptain64

The PTO doesn't have to be all or nothing. Would a more strategic 2-week (or 1-week) break be better received?

Also as a more passive job-seeking strategy, you could leverage your professional network of past co-workers to let you know if any opportunities come up (always had a lot of success with this personally). That way you can dip your toes into the job pool without having to switch focus completely.

trilinearnz commented on Ask HN: I miss the internet of the 90s/00s. What should I do? · Posted by u/ryeguy_24

mips_avatar · a year ago

One thing I recently started doing is not caring about what I "should" be doing when I program. I used to love coding up random sites in basic html javascript with a few jQuery calls. But I was told I "should" be using react js, node js, hosting on specific cloud providers instead of a vps. I'm not saying all the new tools are bad, but I think the problem with the modern web, is it's less about building what you want and much much more about building what is considered "best practice". I think if you want adventures in the web, just start building janky weird stuff. AI is a help in that if you know what to ask for. Just have fun.

trilinearnz · a year ago

Extremely well said.

trilinearnz commented on Ask HN: Tired of software career. What now? · Posted by u/purple-leafy

trilinearnz · a year ago

It may be helpful to consider the matter from the lens of 'what is my core competency'. I had similar existential questions recently, and pursued an MBA to that end (after realising that I enjoyed analysing people behaviour in companies and thought that might translate into a management career). By the end of it, I realised that I was simply able to 'do' the job of a dev much more naturally than becoming a manager. At that stage, the problem changed from 'what do I want to do' to 'what can I actually do'.

I'm sure you are capable of switching careers and skillsets more successfully than I was, but for me, metaphorically speaking, after peering over the hedge, I came to be content with the color of the grass on my own side.

trilinearnz commented on Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machine mitpress.mit.edu/97802625... · Posted by u/jarmitage

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

Is this about the original Sim City, Sim City 2000, or does it cover all of them in a general way?

trilinearnz commented on Ask HN: Am I dead meat already? · Posted by u/tHrOwAwAyXQWE

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

My advice would be to dip your toes into some of the languages / frameworks that the "specific tech stack" jobs are wanting, so you at least have some exposure to it. Then, you can focus on selling your wealth of general programming experience and transferrable skills to bridge the gap.

A good lens might be to view those positions as senior first, and technology second, even if you don't necessarily voice that perspective in the cover letter / interview.

trilinearnz commented on How much of a genius-level move was binary space partitioning in Doom? (2019) twobithistory.org/2019/11... · Posted by u/davikr

paulryanrogers · 2 years ago

Quake 1 and 2 did this as well. I wasted so much time with details that later got botched by the vertex compression. I think Quake 3 had vertex animation too, but they split the character at the hips so it could face away from the direction of travel.

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

The hip swivel worked well, functionally, but I always lamented how stiff the character animation looked because of it.

Was the vertex compression responsible for the wobbling/swimming effect you'd see on models, when running Q1 and Q2 in OpenGL mode?

trilinearnz commented on Ask HN: How would you study Front End development from zero in 2024? · Posted by u/dostoynikov

cwdegidio · 2 years ago

A good place, in my opinion, to start would be something like https://roadmap.sh/frontend. It lays out a good tree of knowledge that you may start following. Really, at the start, your looking to dive deep into topics such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Also you'll want to start getting a good foundation of how the internet works in general (stuff like HTTP, SSL, etc.). This stuff becomes your bedrock that all your other Frontend skills will build upon.

You can also look to some guided courses that may help if you just need some direction. Odin Project is a good one and free. Colt Steele has a good one (my nephew worked through it and liked it) on Udemy called the "Web Developer Bootcamp". Don't pay full price though for that one, clear your browser cache, go into incognito mode, etc and you should see it discounted to like $20... if a sale isn't already running.

I can't emphasize enough... learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript deeply. They are the foundation before things like React, Angular, etc. Don't fall for the "get rich quick" promise of frameworks. Nothing makes a senior developer more insane than when you come in as a "React whiz" but don't understand the fundamentals at all.

And finally... BUILD BUILD BUILD. Build and abandon a thousand projects. See something on a website or in an app you like? Try to recreate it. Learn to pull it apart and see how it works.

If you have never done anything like this, your going to hit rough patches. The pain you feel is "learning". I'm the lead dev on my team and they act like I'm some genius. Truth is, I'm a slow learner but I'm not afraid of being uncomfortable and experimenting all the time. Best of luck!

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

That is an excellent resource. Thank you for sharing

trilinearnz commented on A Love Letter to Tinkerable Software trevoragilbert.com/posts/... · Posted by u/trevoragilbert

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

Agree with this. For me, being able to tweak Quake (when it came out) was massive. You could poke around in QuakeC, make a funny model / map etc. The fact that customisability extended to it's two sequels was even better.

To a lesser extent, even being able to modify pretty much any game mechanic via the pull-down Console was amazing too. A great entryway to programming for the young enthusiast!

Always was a wonderful advantage to owning a PC over a console. That, and the accompanying utilities you could combine with the game, to create new graphics, sounds etc.

trilinearnz commented on Why does the moon change size when you snipe it in GTA? insiderockstarnorth.blogs... · Posted by u/klaussilveira

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

Similar thing in Terminator: Skynet back in the day. Shoot at the moon and you get an "Ow!" message appearing in your status area. A few more potshots and it literally falls out of the sky - great stuff ;)

trilinearnz commented on Source code for Quake 2 rerelease github.com/id-Software/qu... · Posted by u/steveklabnik

dietrichepp · 2 years ago

Quake II was my first experience writing C.

The code is clear, coherent, and straightforward. I’m not going to say it’s the best source code I’ve ever read, but it set a high bar. I’ve read source code to games since then, and I’ve seen all sorts of weird stuff… I’ve seen functions with nesting levels that go past the right side of the screen, I’ve seen functions a mile long that do a million things, you know. It was an early lesson that you could do cool things with simple code.

We used Quake and Quake II to teach a VR class to kids in the late 1990s and early 2000s. You got a VR headset, you got a half-dozen PCs with Q.E.D. or Qoole, and you taught a room of 12-14 or 14-18 year-old students how to make their own virtual reality game.

“Make your own virtual reality game” was, essentially, making your own Quake or Quake II level, without any monsters or guns in it. The story for the game could be told through on-screen messages triggered in the level. Students made all sorts of levels. One group made a level with slime you had to cross, and a button that turned on pumps to drain the slime (very much like what you would see in a standard Quake II level). Another group made a 3D maze out of water that you had to swim through, floating in space. I still have some of these student-made levels on my hard drive, after all these years, although I have trouble getting some of them to work.

For the class, I made a mod that gave the players a flaregun instead of the blaster. Basically, it was still the blaster, but with a different sound effect and no weapon model. I modified the blaster bolt to be affected by gravity, bounce off of things, and go out after a certain amount of time.

(If you were in that class—you may not have gotten the headset. We couldn’t always get it to work.)

trilinearnz · 2 years ago

Certainly id's code is clean and well-structured, however I always had a tough time trying to grok it as a layperson. Comments (those within the functions) are relatively sparse, and the code often contains quite cryptic expressions that are somewhat bewildering to those without an high understanding of 3D graphics.

This, of course, makes perfect sense as an output from an industry leader in the field (Carmack). However it definitely requires a lot of foreknowledge and, dare I say it, a mathematical bent to follow with confidence.