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johnl87 | 13 years ago | on: Intel researchers put WiFi inside—the processor, that is

That's exactly what they did. That's what SOC means. Basically instead of having to have a separate chip on the board for the radio, it's within the processor. Of course the board still needs an antenna, but this is just another step towards x86 cell phones.

johnl87 | 13 years ago | on: If you were involved in the OpenGL ES specification, you are an idiot

Finally someone actually works in the cg industry replies. +1 to this. No one really uses fixed function stuff these days, everything is shaders and vertex and index buffers. There are no fixed function hardware units, everything in the graphics pipeline is programmable and done in shaders. Even using fixed function stuff on today's hardware forces the driver to compile a built in shader. In the interest of keeping driver size small (for mobile apps), they force the programmers to write their own shaders and throw away the fixed function stuff that would bloat the driver and slow the shader compiler.

johnl87 | 14 years ago | on: Why I Hate Test Driven Development

Debugging is not fun when your program is leaking memory and you're not sure why, and existing code tools don't tell you why. Especially if you're writing drivers. Sure, stepping through python code might be fun, but not low level c/c++ code where you're in a call stack that's 20 levels deep and half the time you don't have source for the parts the code breaks or asserts on.

johnl87 | 15 years ago | on: A rare look into North Korea's famed Propaganda School

This video kind of makes you wonder if people are really saying these things cause they mean it or if they are just being watched and have to act a certain way to reap the benefits of being a firm party supporter. Benefits like living in Pyongyang and actually having food and shelter. I feel that it's probably the latter in like 99% of cases.

My father in communist Poland wasn't able to do the research he wanted at his university at Poland cause he wasn't in the party. He cursed out his professor and called him a communist and got kicked out and had to transfer schools. Calling someone out as a communist was a slur against them because those reaping in party benefits were seen as betraying their own country.

I feel like it's a similar case in NKorea. You have to act that way cause your neighbors will tell the authorities about any signs of disloyalty and the family will disappear (into a re-education camp.) I think that's why these people on the videos when they are interviewed really chose their words carefully and make anything they say an attempt to glorify the dear leader. Their eyes give them away though. I feel like everyone is aware of it -- the conditions in their country vs the west, but they live in fear of expressing their own opinions so they just shut up and go about their lives.

johnl87 | 15 years ago | on: How to Become a Game Programmer

I'm a computer science major and I've interned at an animation company as a technical director. We were outsourced for a certain AAA game that is coming out in 2011 (can't say what companies cause it would probably breach the NDA.) I spent a few days at the actual game company, and it sort of put me off game programming completely. Even though people had cool offices with posters and toys everywhere it was a very dull and depressing place to work. People came in at 10 and sometimes stayed till midnight. The highlight of the day was ordering dinner at 6pm. It was basically permanent crunch time. Also people don't realize that most of game creating is assets. Animations, mocap, recording dialog, scripting. There is very little actual programming unless you're working on an assets/tools team which makes engines (in my case they licensed the Unreal engine so most of the work in terms of programming was done.) Making a game nowadays is more like making a 10 hour movie...there are writers and directors that are hired. They film the action in a mocap studio and eventually animators clean up the data and level designers import it into the engine.

johnl87 | 15 years ago | on: The Perils of JavaSchools (2005)

What is sad that all the cool hardcore C programming jobs are going oversees - unless you're a computer engineer and deal with hardware. Everyone is looking for php, ajax, python, etc, basically C-based type-less languages which anyone competent in C can pick up in a matter of days. But try to apply to those companies with C, C++ and x86 assembler on your resume, no one will get back to you.

johnl87 | 15 years ago | on: What I Learned When I Fell in Love with Piano Scales

Everyone is talking about how much they practice their scales in their "daily practice." If it's a chore to you and has no practical application, don't waste your time, play something you like. The only reason I know a few minor and major scales is because I like to improvise. When it comes time to solo, I know what to play because I know what notes are in the scale. If I didn't know any scales, I'd be lost. It also make a lot more sense if you practice with some backing track/chords cause then you can figure out what sounds good. This also applies to playing piano, lets say I want to play some minor sounding progression, I'd most likely play A minor because all the white keys are in the A minor scale which makes it easy to create a melody.

johnl87 | 15 years ago | on: Become a farm worker

When I was in japan I worked on two organic farms for about a month total. I did it through the wwoof program which is available all over the world. It was a great time. Even though the work was really tiring on some days I still felt happy without the crazy distractions and responsibilities of school and a part time job. Probably the happiest I've felt in a while.

johnl87 | 15 years ago | on: Consider dropping out of school.

Dropping out of school, esp. high school is a bad idea. First of all, no one will take a high school aged kid seriously. Second of all it would seriously hurt their chances of getting into college (regardless of what people say about college, it's still useful for most people with a tech degree.) I mean, sure you can backwards rationalize that once you drop out you will learn more, but success in life isn't all about how much book knowledge one has. It also has a lot (probably even more) to do with social skills which one can work on while surrounded by classmates and teachers in high school.

johnl87 | 16 years ago | on: Apple fears the killer app

I don't think what language you use to code an app really makes a difference in how killer your app is. Also this makes no sense because I'm pretty sure apple developers use objective-c, c and c++ to code their apps (look at their job descriptions.) They're pretty powerful languages. I'm pretty sure the operating system you're running was written with c. All the music you listen to was produced with an app written in c and c++. How is this going to prevent awesome apps from being created?

johnl87 | 16 years ago | on: Seeking an Objective Test for Attention Disorder

This is just my personal experience with friends who had add. My previous 2 roommates at two different places were taking ADD pills. Somehow after their pills ran out they kept complaining how they're not gonna be able to do their homework, study, etc, yet they were able to sit and play complicated computer games for hours on end.

johnl87 | 16 years ago | on: Go To University, Not For CS

I regret studying CS. I would have rather gone for CE and learned more in depth about how the computer works. It seems like all the computer engineers at my school are really good coders too, and they understand the hardware better. Opens up more jobs where you can do more hardcore coding like drivers and stuff.

johnl87 | 16 years ago | on: Ballmer to announce VS 2010 will compile native Mac/iPhone apps at WWDC

I don't know about keyboard mappings. I'd rather press F10 to step through code rather than apple key + Shift + P or whatever it is. I'd also rather press F5 to debug than apple key + enter. I also like that tab in visual studio tabs lines if you highlight them instead of replacing them with a tab like xcode does.

johnl87 | 16 years ago | on: Things That Annoy Programmers

When I first started interning at this company, I always wondered why people were doing stupid things in code and I would fix it to be cleaner and the program would break. Then I would realize there's a reason it was done in this stupid roundabout way. People that don't comment their reasons for doing stuff out of the ordinary annoy me.

johnl87 | 16 years ago | on: The Demoscene -- an Overview

The problem is that everyone doing demoscene stuff got jobs and is getting paid for it now. Look at crysis, etc. No one cares about programming dick waving contests anymore, it's all about who can get a job at Microsoft. If it doesn't benefit your resume, no one cares for it. I personally became a computer science major because I wanted to write demos. After about four years is when I really started to get it as far as graphics goes and even though now I have an idea how effects are done, I feel like there's still so much to learn to keep up with what guys in these demo groups like farbrausch and fairlight do. The learning curve for doing this kind of stuff is pretty high. Not only do you have to know programming, but some kind of library like DirectX or OpenGL, shader languages and all the linear algebra behind the effects.
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