It wasn't my curiosity that introduced me to programming. Actually, it was my mother.

It was about six years ago, when I'd told her I'd like to make video-games, like all kids do. She didn't just nod and go about her way. She found a free course that taught programming to kids my age and immediately enrolled me. Looking back, it was surely the best thing she'd done for me, because it gave me a purpose and a future to look forward to.

The course was interesting. We learned the basics of C++, then moved on to harder topics like algorithms and data types. But more and more, I was beginning to feel left behind. Like I didn't belong there. It didn't help that I only programmed on the course, with no practice back home.

I felt scared of the future. Thought I didn't have what it takes to become a programmer. I might have broken the last straw when I started playing truant and went to McDonald's to pass the time. Because every time I did go to the course, I felt stupid and anxious. So I simply skipped.

Time passed. I got more depressed, became more antisocial, my self-esteem took a nosedive. And when it comes to depression, people always seek an escape path.

I got my escape in fiction. Started reading books, tried writing stories, and it got to the point where I asked my mother if I could become a writer and not a programmer.

And guess what? She said, "Do what brings you happiness. This is your life."

It's funny, that such a silly line stopped and got me to think. Turned out, I didn't program for fun, for myself or for my career. I'd done it for my parents, for their expectations and I was scared that in failing, I'd become a loser in their eyes.

I dropped out of the programming course. Not because it sucked, but because I wasn't going there for myself, but for my parents. But I didn't quit programming. No, I watched countless tutorials, youtube videos, browsed StackOverflow, read some books, coded every day, and now I can say without hesitation, that I love programming. I'm hooked. And I don't want to stop.

If you've read this so far, I'm sorry for my rambling. I will now leave you with only one tip: If you decided to do something, do it for yourself. Forget about parents, expectations, career, future, time or money and do it only because you want to. Because nothing else matters. Only your happiness.

When i successfully install Arch on my system.

Translation : sometimes i think i am god

Trending in India now.

Hi everyone, long time no see.

Today I want to tell you a story about Linux, and its acceptance on the desktop.

Long ago I found myself a girlfriend, a wonderful woman who is an engineer too but who couldn't be further from CS. For those in the know, she absolutely despises architects. She doesn't know the size units of computers, i.e. the multiples of the byte. Breaks cables on the regular, and so on. For all intents and purposes, she's a user. She has written some code for a college project before, but she is by no means a developer.

She has seen me using Linux quite passionately for the last year or so, and a few weeks ago she got so fed up with how Windows refused to work on both her computers (on one of them literally failing to run exe's, go figure), that she allowed me to reinstall both systems, with one of them being dualbooted Windows 10 + Linux.

The computer that runs Linux is not one she uses very often, but for gaming (The Sims) it's her platform to go. On it I installed Debian KDE, for the following reasons:
- It had to be stable as I didn't want another box to maintain.
- It had to be pretty OOTB, as first impressions are crucial.
- It had to be easy to use, given her skill level.
- It had to have a GUI abstraction to apt, the KDE team built Discover which looks gorgeous.

She had the following things to say about Linux, when she went to download The Sims from a torrent (I installed qBittorrent for her iirc).

"Linux is better, there's no need to download anything"
"Still figuring things out, but I'm liking it"
"I'm scared of using Windows again, it's so laggy"
"Linux works fine, I'm becoming a Linux user"

Which you can imagine, it filled me with pride. We've done it boys. We've built a superior system that even regular users can use, if the system is set up to be user-friendly.

There are a few gripes I still have, and pitfalls I want to address. There's still too many options, users can drown in the sheer amount of distro's to choose from. For us that's extremely important but they need to have a guide there. However, don't do remote administration for them! That's even worse than Microsoft's tracking! Whenever you install Linux on someone else's computer, don't be all about efficiency, they are coming from Windows and just want it to be easy to use. I use Mate myself, but it is not the thing I would recommend to others. In other words, put your own preferences aside in favor of objective usability. You're trying to sell people on a product, not to impose your own point of view. Dualboot with Windows is fine, gaming still sucks on Linux for the most part. Lots of people don't have their games on Steam. CAD software and such is still nonexistent (OpenSCAD is very interesting but don't tell me it's user-friendly). People are familiar with Windows. If you were to be swimming for the first time in the deep water, would you go without aids? I don't think so.

So, Linux can be shown and be actually usable by regular people. Just pitch it in the right way.

Playing horror games

| Lights on -> cant see shit on the screen and more vulnerable to jumpscares

| Lights off -> the atmosphere of the room is generally spookier and i get scared of misc. noises

Oh well

Think I am going to try out my first stuff for my game engine in 2D. The games I have the most fond memories of were 2D. Sure I like what has happened on the 3D side. But it would be fun to recreate some of my favorite 2D games. Except with one caveat: procedural generation. Never play the same game twice. For testing purposes I will have a seed system to regenerate the same worlds. I would have played these games so much longer if they had been based on a seed for generation of content.

I also like the idea of weapons and armor never being exactly the same. Sure they can look similar, but on close inspection you could see differences. It will be fun to start with base models and then add imperfections and differences.

Another issue I have with fantasy games is always leveling up the weapon by buying something better. Sure we have improvement systems though smithing and magic, but some weapons are always better than others. I wanted to have a game where weapons could be improved by usage and upgrades. Kill 1000 trolls and the weapon gets imbued with trollbane. Kill a dragon and the blood infuses and it deals fire damage. So a player could start out with the family sword and end up with a god tier weapon at the end of the game. Make weapons become legendary. Not because it has more power, but because trolls recognize the blade and the wielder and are scared shitless.

Terrain in 2D should be a lot easier to generate. Weapons, armor, etc should be easier to modify and generate. This should give me the grounding I need to develop the algorithms for a future 3D system. Godot is currently stronger in 2D than 3D. That will change in the next couple of years as more focus is put on the engine. There is no reason I cannot experiment with mixing 2D and 3D as well.

Holy shit, I was just thinking I cannot imagine the amazing shit they could have done with the games I played as a kid with 2D physics!

Haha, something they had in the older games was actual gambling. You could bet on monster fights and slot machines in game. I wonder if that takes a hard hit with ESRB now?

Currently stuck in tutorial hell. Learning how the engine works and seeing what features are available. I get more excited each video I watch. The engine is packed with goodies and the addons are crazy good.

tldr: First project will be short game in 2D. Will explore procedural content.

Goals before wk200:
0. Get the hell out of this Geophysics faculty and transfer to Computer science faculty in university which I was dreaming of since I was high school freshman.
1. Meet my girlfriend. (I'm in long distance relationship and there's a huge ocean between us).
2. Get to be able to learn probability in Math so I can understand AI topic.
3. Get better money from my amazon business.
4. Get better sleep.
5. Stop being so scared of dentists and go fucking fix my tooth that hurts.
6. Lose weight.
7. Don't buy video-games that I'm not going to play after a week and forget about it.
8. Listen to the Math lectures.
9. Stop feeling the need to kiss the girl that sits next to me in university (Which is by the way my BFF ).
That's all I can think of yet.

I was once a guy fascinated by the world of computers , games and tech stuff. And today in my 21 and almost 6 months before my graduation ( as a fucking "CS" engineer) , i feel almost everything in CS as difficult or boring , even the things i am usually good at , and by looking at the competition, i am scared if this career is ever going to be fruitful for me :(

Being a native Android dev for most of my college days(yet to start a full time professional life), i often feel scared of my life choices.

Like, i chose to go into a field in which am totally on my own . Android is not a subject taught or supported by colleges, so a virtual shelter that every fresher gets, i.e that of a "he's just a college passout, he wouldn't know that" is not for me. I am supposed to be a self learner and a knowledgeable android dev by default.

Other than that , idk why i feel that am having a very specific skillset which would be harmful for me if am not the best at it.

I feel the same for entire Android dev. I mean, its nothing but a very specific hardware device with a small screen and a bunch of lmited sensors. Our tools and apps are limited to just manipulate them to do little fancy stuff offline. Other than that everything (and sometimes even this too) could be achieved by a website/webapp of a web dev.

A particular native android dev don't know how the ML/AI stuff works, don't know how backend stuff works don't know how the cloud stuff works, jeck we don't even know how those unity games work!

We are just some end product makers taking data from somewhere handled by someone and printing them in fancy gui.
(But we are good at ranting about stupid mobile hardware manufacturers, i tell u that)

So am not sure if being an Android dev is a going to be good for me in the future. I mean , a web dev always gets to interact at every level of products, but we can't.

I always feel my future will end up being limited to being good in Android, later shifting to IOS to being completely unemployed because everything is controlled by js and web dev tools and native programming is no longer a thing anymore :/

My first interaction with Computers started in 1996/1997 and it was Dangerous Dave, PacMan, Mario, Pre that pulled me in so deep. We had multiple Floppy Disks and each of them used to go awry after a few months of use. Had to keep deleting stuff to fit all my Favourite Games

A year later I learnt the basics of MS-DOS and GWBasic. Looking at seniors do C Programming on Borland Turbo made me feel scared and one of them said it is the real language to make Games, and all types of Animation stuff. I was very intrigued but only for a while. I kept playing Games which was what I was fit for at that time