Yes. There is already an answer with many votes saying so, but I’ll add myself to the list.
I don’t have to like all the language, and not even all of the standard library. I learnt C++ with the Qt library, and I still do 99% of my development using Qt because it’s the kind of software that I like to write the most. I can choose the parts that I like the most about the full C++ ecosystem, like most people do (you would have to see how different game development is, for example).
I’m also learning Rust, and I see nothing wrong with it. It’s just that I see C++ better for the kind of stuff that I need to write (at this time at least).
personally I just can’t get over the syntax to even try rust. to me it just looks terrible. I know not everybody agrees though. that and having even longer compile times and no mature gui framework
IMO the syntax is fine except for the borrow checker shit that just looks arcane. The fact that everything cargo drags in is statically linked really turns me off the language for anything serious. It’s really unfortunate because I’d otherwise put some time into learning it, but it seems like the rust foundation is fine with this (ridiculous IMO) workflow.
I’ve had game and software ideas swirling around in my brain, but for the longest time I couldn’t program them. But now, I have enough knowledge to build parts of my grand deckbuilding game idea: An arcade style deckbuilding game with strong meta-progression. It’s playable at superspruce.org.
As for some other ideas, including the simple idea of a weighted shuffle music playlist where each song has its own weight, they are still currently out of reach, mostly due to trying to access the filesystem and whatnot. Better than a month ago, where within the last month I found out how to make the browser play music
I once read an article about a guy, whos just doing this. He is selling gaming ideas to studios. But to be fair, he did develop some indie game by him self. He just realized, that he is not good in developing and the hates the whole programming and design part. He only has good ideas.
Is this a hard problem to solve? I’ve not attempted it yet myself.
I seem to remember this was a problem in Advent of Code one year?
I’m imagining there are plenty of algorithms to solve this already, right? With varying numbers of towers and plates? A general solution for solvable amounts of each? Maybe?
This is not a hard problem once you wrap your head around it. It is the earliest that some programmers learn about recursion which has a lot of pitfalls and can be frustrating at times.
Ah okay, that’s where the trauma comes from then, perhaps? 😅 Just being new to a concept and perhaps starting out with a problem that is a little too big while at the same time learning the concept?
I feel like it’s maybe a bit too much to say that it’s a trauma. The Vietnam-flashback picture is just very fitting, because the puzzle is called “Towers of Hanoi” (Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam).
A lot of programmer memes seem to be about first-year compsci students that just want to build video games, and don’t really like math. For those people, sure, algorithms could be a bit of a rude awakening.
I was once that first year compsci student. Hanoi kicked my ass, I had to go recruit help from my smarter friends. Though to be fair the teacher didn’t explain it that well and just sort of threw it at us to see which of us would sink or swim. After we all complained about it he gave us a proper lesson on recursion and it was a little easier after that but I still struggled a lot on that project. We also implemented Conway’s Game of Life that semester and I preferred that project by a lot.
See, when I was a comp sci undergrad 20-odd years ago our department wanted to do a programming competition for the local high schools. We set some ground rules that were similar to ACS programming competition rules, but a bit more lax - the big ones were that it had to run in command line, it had to take the problem dataset filename as the first parameter and it had to be able to solve all datasets attempted by the judges in less that 2 minutes per dataset, noting that the judgement datasets would be larger than example ones.
Some of the students were asked to come up with problem ideas. I was told mine was unfair, but mine was entirely about choosing the right algorithm for the job.
It went like this - the file would contain a pyramid of numbers. You were supposed to think of each number as connecting to the two numbers diagonally below it and all paths could only proceed down. The goal was to calculate the largest sum of any possible path down.
As the size of the pyramid increases the obvious algorithm (walking all the routes down the tree) is going to fall afoul of the time limit pretty quickly, as are several alternative algorithms you might try. So a pyramid 100 or 1000 levels deep very rapidly falls out of the time limit unless you choose the right algorithm because there are 2^(n-1) paths for a n-level pyramid. I’d suggested a…much bigger dataset as one of the judgement datasets One that took my reference implementation about 15 seconds.
This was a contest for high school kids c. 2001 and was going to involve 4 problems across 6 hours. The prof making the decision thought it was a bit much for them to figure out why the algorithm they were likely to try wasn’t working in time (noting that the only feedback they were going to get was along the lines of “failed for time on judgement dataset 3 with 10000 layers”, that it was because it was a poor choice of algorithm rather than some issue in their implementation, and then to devise a faster algorithm and implement and debug that all ideally within 1.5 hours.
For example, the algorithm I used for my reference solution started one layer above the bottom of the pyramid, checked the current number against either child it could be summed with, replaced the current number with the larger sum and continued in that fashion up the pyramid layer by layer. So, comparison, add, store for each number in the pyramid above the bottom layer. When you process the number at the top of the pyramid, that’s the final result. It’s simple and it’s fast. But it requires looking at the problem upside down, which is admittedly a useful skill.
I mean it’s basically solving one of those labyrinth puzzles in a puzzle book by starting at the finish and working your way to the start, avoiding all the wrong turns. 😄 It’s the smart solution. 😉 But yeah, maybe they had a point with the “no feedback” issue. In Advent of Code, at least you get to see your final input data.
It’s an easy problem to solve… eventually - it’s more annoying to solve optimally and that’s what programmers usually get handed as a play problem within a year or two of starting to tinker.
The red circle is helpful for me because Stack Overflow’s UI is garbage. I always read the post, and then read the thing under the post, which is a bunch of nerds nitpicking over TLAs instead of an actual answer. Every time I open that site I forget that the answers are underneath the neckbeards, because it’s so unintuitive.
No Microsoft Access is/was a GUI software actually meant to have databases instead of how everyone uses Excel/spreadsheets as databases. It is a part of the office suite. It works pretty much like traditional databases but has an easier to access GUI for non programmers I guess. I don’t think it’s used a ton nowadays except for legacy processes that haven’t been updated.
No its microsofts database GUI program that’s part of Microsoft Office . imagine software made for users who have a vague understanding of SQL and visual basic but then an exec. forced the designers and devs to make it accessible to everyone while giving them barely any teamembers causing a fuckton of technical debt and unintuitive quirks , making anyone who opens the software feel like they have just been placed in a highly equipped tank , in front of a wall of unlabeled levers and told to drive the tank , or at least that’s how I view it.
(reposting from another account sorry if you see both comments)
We use it at work for it’s actual intended purpose: as a small database that isn’t customer facing. It’s used and maintained by nontechnical staff to keep data about equipment (slot machines).
It would be too much info for excel, but it’s not enough to really need anything more.
Look, some of us old farts started on Linux back before nano was included by default, and your options for text editing on the command line were either:
vi/vim, a perfectly competent text editor with arcane and unintuitive key combos for commands
emacs, a ludicrously overcomplicated kitchen-sink program that had reasonable text-editing functionality wedged in between the universal woodchuck remote control and the birdcall translation system
Given those options, most of us chose to learn how to key-chord our way around vim, and old habits die hard.
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