Older blog entries for bytesplit (starting at number 60)

At the moment, I am at a standstill in programming. I *still* don't have any projects completed. The positive thing is that I am not the only one who has experienced this. I am tiring of the scripting languages.

My choices for compiled programming languages have come down to C, C++ and Java. Java is too slow, but a beautiful language. C++ is very complex, especially so for beginner programmers, but a very powerful language. C is a very fast language, but lacks the OOP features (and I'm sure many other things I don't know about).

So, which one? Right now I need something fun to work on. I thought about trying to write a Tetris game, which would be my first game ever written. I can imagine the playing field as being one huge 2D array, and simply looping through the array on the dropping of each block, terminating the program when the very top/middle block is already full (thus meaning no more blocks can be dropped).

Which language would be best for learning how to program this game in? With the previous link I posted, that site does seem to be dead. The author highly recommends starting to write games in the C language, but if you listen to the many opinions out there, many say that C++ is the better language to start out with, because it contains all of C's features and more.

Please, some of the better writers and more experienced programmers on this site, put up an article about this very thing. I'm not interested in hearing "whatever suits the purpose", because if I knew that answer I wouldn't be asking. Besides, general statements are just that.

Is there a window manager out there that does it job well? My criteria are (a) ease of navigation between programs; and (b) pleasing to the eye. I think that KDE and Gnome are very pretty interfaces to Linux and Unix, but are too heavy. By heavy, I mean it is just too "busy". By busy I mean there is too much for the user to look at, there isn't enough room (without using more than one desktop) to work with.

That is why I moved to FluxBox. FluxBox is beautiful :) I hope I don't sound like a griper, but I have one. Maybe this is a browser issue. But, let me describe what happens. When I first open up a Mozilla session, the browser stays in its place, meaning that the FluxBox task bar is visible. Give it time, though. Soon the Mozilla window is covering the entire desktop, and you can't even see the 'x' (close) button :(

I really like how easy it is to configure the menu in FluxBox. However, some of my apps are not starting, at least I can't see them running. The programs are running in the background, however. It takes me running a 'killall <program name>' to stop the programs. In fact, it has gotten so bad that I have to switch to another console from X and reboot the machine. Whoa! I never thought about killing X from that other console, so I'll try that soon.

Very soon here, I am going to look into programming for Linux. I've pieced together a set of tools to use, still need to determine which graphics API I want to use. Tck? Gtk? Kde? Gnome? Any opinions are very welcome, and because I don't think this has anything to with "depends on personal need", and everything to do with what people as a whole are using, I am welcoming any suggestions on this.

tk, I see. If you can't stand reading what I have to say, and are really that persistent in refusing to admit that your actions were uncalled for, then do the easy thing. Ignore me :)

tk, here we go again. Please tell me why you feel you can't go for any amount of time before finding someone to trash? I find you to be rather disrespecting, in the way that you call me a kook. Do you see me going around saying these things about you? You trash me first, I - WILL - defend myself. However, you won't find me trashing you. Period. My latest plea to you is to support your arguments with legible facts, and leave the name calling and referencing out of it. The idea here is to talk about open source, our contributions the open source world, not try to aggravate the public and having people trash one another. We are a community, right?
24 Aug 2002 (updated 24 Aug 2002 at 17:32 UTC) »

Since when did folks feel that everyone on Advogato.org enjoys hearing them brag about how they were in the gifted class as children, they were more intelligent than nearly all of the teachers, that they couldn't understand why someone in IRC doesn't like them and they had to do an awful thing like ban the person?

When people act like that, I find it very difficult to believe anything they say, and wonder if these people have a grudge against the world for their own mistakes and shortcomings.

23 Aug 2002 (updated 23 Aug 2002 at 06:27 UTC) »
goingware , you touched my heart on that story. i am sorry to see that you lost your friend to cancer. i wish you well. reading your diary tonight was all that i needed to fufill my visit to advogato.org tonight. if you would like to talk about sandy to me, or to anyone else on this site, please do so. i am here to listen.
hub, Just keep up what you are doing. Study harder, work harder. Eventually someone with the right mind will take you aboard. There are people here that are thinking of you.

I need to read up on the documentation at the Linux Handbook to figure out why some of the programs I am trying to install to Debian are not installing.

Right now I just want to enjoy playing around from the command line, try as many examples as I can. Unfortunately, I know I won't be able to remember a lot of those commands. Someone told me that the commands are stored in "bash history"? Maybe someone can point me this file?

From a newcomer's perspective, it's been refreshing to just chat from within Debian, and not have to look at eye candy or worry whether Windows is about to lock up on me.

mbp, I do remember asking everyone to let all the previous mess go. There were no innocents in that mess, and it really doesn't make any sense to continue on with it. Remember, flamacious comments deserve no apology. Basically, I feel I am a pretty fair person. To support my belief that "what goes around comes around", I am suffering for my own actions (reactions?) as well.

Again, I ask that everyone do as I am trying to do with this site: use it to find ways to contribute to the Unix and Linux community, and to contribute to open source software development. Actually, I am using the site to help ME get some enjoyment out of using non-Windows operating systems, with the gut feeling that my technical skills will be of some value to the communities mentioned above.

I was delighted to receive help in getting Debian installed on my third machine. So far I just know how to use apt-get and apt-cache to search for, get and install packages. I did use BitchX from the command line, but found it a bit cluttered. Curfloo, on the other hand, I am having a blast with! I love being able to walk away from the machine and come back to read previous messages from hours ago. All that without having to worry that Windows might lock up on me. At the moment I am utterly torn between learning as much as I can from the command line, getting a nice Window Manager running, to start coding my PHP, C and PERL code from a GUI environment.

sdodji: Do you happen to use PHP a lot? If so, do you enjoy using GTK with it? I have looked at some demos of PHP-GTK, and wasn't all that impressed. Probably more so with the fact that the GUIs looked immature (and they are) and that you still have to have machines set up to support both PHP and GTK. Might one day PHP-GTK become a compiled language, or run like JAVA is?
kbreit, I have found that I work much better when under time constraints. Having too much time on my hands tends to make my mind wander, so having little forces me to complete the task at hand and do a much better job at prioritizing my tasks. I hope this helps :)

51 older entries...

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!