I recently read an interesting blog post asking “what’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?” After thinking about it for a while, I realized I wasn’t able to answer. Not because I don’t have fun programming, but because I have so much fun programming, I can’t easily single out one project as the one [...]
Source code version control systems have been around for decades, but sometimes I suspect people are using them just because everybody else is, or because their manager told them to do so, or because it’s company policy. Although most people will agree that using version control is a prerequisite for any serious software project, many [...]
As a programmer I spend a significant amount of my time punching keys on a keyboard while writing code, and even documentation. Over the years I have also accumulated a wide variety of shortcut key combinations that I use for everyday tasks. Because of this, a keyboard’s layout and physical design is very important to [...]
I am not easily impressed by the technical aspects of graphics in computer games, but every few years a game comes along that really blows me away. In 1993 it was Doom, in 1995 it was Descent, in 1996 it was Quake, in 1999 it was Quake 3, in 2004 it was Doom 3 (and [...]
In the history of computer games, I think Snake might be one of the most cloned games ever. At least, it has always been my favorite game to implement when learning a new programming langauge or trying a new platform. To me, Snake is the “Hello, World” of game programming. Even though other classics like [...]
Configuration, preferences, settings, options, properties—whatever you call it—all but the simplest applications allow the user to customize some of their functionality (and often appearance). But how do you implement this? Is there a best practices for programming application preferences in a clean, easily maintainable and well-structured way? I recently began working on my latest hobby [...]
After reading Jeff Atwoods comments on the fact(?) that programmer’s don’t read books I was a bit upset. Not because I disagree with him; my experience also shows that most programmers, at least of the ones I have met and worked with in the past, neither read nor own books about their profession—I even remember [...]
Some of you may wonder, what happened to WinCue? The web site has not been updated for over four years, and there has been no activity whatsoever on the SourceForge project. I recently received an e-mail from a user who wanted to report a bug. Here’s my reply: Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:16:27 +0200 [...]
Welcome to loop label. This is, as you may already have guessed, my blog. For many years I was very much against the concept of blogging, mainly because most blogs I read were completely uninteresting to me. But then I finally realized two things: 1) blogs are not going away, no matter how much I [...]
