mingmecca
Joined 14 years ago
Karma
132
Submissions
39
Member since
Jul 9
Recent submissions
Comment · 7 years ago
Another VIC-20 alum here. At the age of 10, I remember trying to write a version of Donkey Kong in BASIC and was flabbergasted when I ran out of memory before I could even get barrels rolling! Ah, the good ol' days!
Comment · 7 years ago
Speaking as someone who cut my teeth in the 80s and early 90s: I miss the elitism and exclusivity of it. Nowadays the internet has made it so any question can be answered within seconds, but back then you had to scrupulously acquire your information from magazines, Usenet discussions, and just plain experimenting with the code. As things currently stand, programming has become a commodity skill that anyone with a room temperature IQ can learn within a reasonably small time frame. Then, you get on StackExchange and start cobbling together your app from copypasta provided by other programmers.
Things have been dumbed down considerably.
Comment · 7 years ago
I learned that the startup dream of being acquired is bittersweet. Sweet that I got rich, bitter that my baby is now being eviscerated by the acquiring company to make it less bleeding edge and more mainstream. There are worse things in life I guess. But its akin to watching your child turn to prostitution - you wanted so much more for them.
Comment · 8 years ago
I believe this to be true (embodiment as a precursor to cognition). So much of our early years learning is exploring how our various actions lead to a corresponding result. Touching a hot stove vs petting a soft cat, for example. And instead of just training 1 neural system at a time we're training all of our senses at once, which I think gives a significant boost to the brain's 'understanding' of the result of the action.
Comment · 9 years ago
True. Except! The bone chilling winters and lake effect snow that accumulates into multiple feet. I remember one winter years ago where, when visiting my girlfriend, the wind-chill temp was 45 below zero and our cars were encased in ice an inch thick.
That being said, I'm from Detroit but if I had to live in Michigan again I'd be in GR.
Comment · 10 years ago
Not directly, but in acquisitions the price of the stock does help in all stock/part stock deals.
Comment · 11 years ago
I'm just wading into the HA waters with Postgres. I somewhat understand the tradeoffs between simplicity and robustness, but what would be your recommendation on how to proceed for someone who is a newbie?
Comment · 11 years ago
I wouldn't fret about it too much.
There are a lot of interviewer egos out there and kids being put in the position of Ultimate Power(tm) can really do a lot of damage to the self-worth of qualified candidates.
Just keep coding, studying algorithms, etc, and putting yourself out there. Eventually you'll get a job that you want and is well suited for you. You're fortunate to live in a time where it's a seller's market, employment-wise.
Comment · 11 years ago
I disagree. What Snowden did was hugely important not just domestically but internationally. Without him we wouldn't have the current push to reform the surveillance state, so it would have grown unfettered into a cancer that really would affect all of us. I don't want to live in a fishbowl.
Many officials from the CIA and NSA (and FBI) have distorted the truth or outright lied to public. Snowden's actions have pushed back on that somewhat, rekindling a strong interest in what the watchers are doing. Stingrays, parallel construction, surveillance airplanes over urban areas, etc. You've got to keep that kind of power under strict control and keep the watchers accountable.
Comment · 11 years ago
I gave Soylent a try when it first came out. The initial formulation gave me incredible gastro-intestinal distress, and it was so painful that I could barely sleep at night. Apparently they heard this sort of feedback from a bunch of people and changed their mixture so it wasn't as hard on the digestive tract. I haven't tried it though, so I don't know if it'd work for me. Honestly, I'm a bit scared to do so. Oh the pain!
Comment · 11 years ago
I lose about 20 points of IQ in a technical interview. It's nerve racking (I wear black shirts to hide the sweat) and it cost me a job working for a well known VR company. I passed the 'practical', which was a 2 hour coding test to generate a working game application, but the tech interview probably did me in. I've been programming games for almost 20 years, and as far as I know I'm one of the few who has done lead/senior level work on games that were both #1 and #2 simultaneous chart-topppers, but I still couldn't get the job. Their loss I guess, but it still sucks, as I was really enthused about what they were doing and could contribute significantly. I was about 10 years older than their typical engineer however, so maybe ageism played a part. I'll never know. I just wish companies would look at my past body of work, see that I'm friendly and un-abrasive, and bring me aboard.
Comment · 11 years ago
Upgrading to the latest and greatest Macbook is absurdly cheap since you can sell your old model for close to the original price
Oh how I wish that were true. I have a 2012 15" Macbook Retina (8gb/256gb) that I bought for $2200. The typical price on eBay is around $1200. So, I can get about half, which is your lament about the XPS 13.
Comment · 11 years ago
I've done what you're attempting to do, and your instincts are right: there are much more interesting and worthwhile things outside of the game industry, including kids. It might be arrogant to say, but game developers are ninjas compared to the rest of the dev world. Doing complex AI/graphics/networking at 60fps is a hell of a lot harder than a typical CRUD app.
I'm glad for my time in the game industry because it sharpened my skills and made the rest of my life a cake walk. But, I wouldn't want to go back due to the exploitation I see in it.
Comment · 11 years ago
July 15th to be exact.
Comment · 12 years ago
I'm curious as to the social angle on this. Do you get lonely out there, are friends primarily on line, is your partner (if applicable) happy with this situation, etc?
I ask because I've always dreamed of a life of simplicity similar to what you've got setup, but the thing that stops me is the possible isolation.