[HN Gopher] Bogus Software
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Bogus Software
Author : jnord
Score : 113 points
Date : 2025-01-02 04:08 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (minesweepergame.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (minesweepergame.com)
| p2detar wrote:
| Lovely article. One of my favorites is "Alien Force" featured in
| WEP #3 [0]. It wasn't mentioned, but actually there were a lot of
| games in these packs.
|
| 0 - https://archive.org/details/win3_alienforce
| phtrivier wrote:
| > The group wrote games at work because "when you're a
| programmer, especially back then, you have a lot of free time,
| because you make changes and you compile. And for a big project,
| a compile would take about 10 minutes."
|
| Well, I have CI builds or deploys that take 10m, but I don't see
| how that would give me time to write games in such small
| increments.
|
| 2-10m is actually my "dreaded" time for feedback loops. Much less
| than that, and you just wait. Much more than that, and you
| schedule something else to do, with a reminder.
|
| But in that frame, you can't really wait, you can't context
| switch productively..
|
| ... which ends you on HN, commenting on articles about people who
| wrote the most used software in the world (solitaire & tetris)
| _while compiling the second most used software in the world (a
| popular OS)_...
| pacifika wrote:
| The problem also is, how to stop working on the side project
| after 10 minutes.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah I found it very hard to stop working on a side project
| especially if it's difficult. I'd literally bite my fingers
| and burn candles until I figured it out or gave up for the
| day, usually well into early morning.
|
| Ah, I wish I don't have to work.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I have the shortcut to timers on my smart watch with two-
| button presses (one to open timers, and one to start a timer)
| to start a timer for certain intervals. It's great for that
| type of thing. A desk one might be good too if there aren't
| people around that would bothered. The watch is good because
| it only vibrates.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Compiling Clipper those days took around 45 minutes.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Wow, did you work on it? I used to read about it on magazines
| and wanted to be a clipper developer. You know, the 90s
| computer ads were full of wonders. I wish we had those
| nowadays but even zines are dying.
| zvr wrote:
| From distant 2007: https://xkcd.com/303/ ("Compiling")
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| In 1995 when I started at Apple, I was on the "GX team" (1).
| MPW was the environment. I remember a clean recompile of
| QuickdrawGX could take hours (maybe as much as 6 hours?). So
| you lived on incremental builds all day, kicked off a clean
| build before heading out at the end of the day.
|
| 1) Quickdraw GX was to be the next-generation graphics
| architecture for Mac OS -- as an optional Extension though, it
| never caught on.
| miohtama wrote:
| Incremental Nokia Series 40 phone image took 4 hours to
| compile and flash in early 00s. Slow debug.
|
| If I recall correctly clean build would have taken days.
| There was a server farm that used distcc to split this to 60
| or so machines.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distcc
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Internet definitely impacts my productivity :) just imagine all
| the time saved by not doom scrolling HN, Reddit and X.
|
| But I agree it's difficult to context switch UNLESS I'm already
| deep in a side project. In that case it's a lot easier to
| switch because I'm on fire. The only issue is that nowadays my
| employer won't be happy about me using the company laptop to
| write a game, or a dynarec, so I have to work remote for that.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Serious question:
|
| If I want to write small games in assembly code, such as
| minesweeper, solitaire and maybe simple 2d RPGs, which modern
| platform is the easiest to approach? Must be in assembly, not in
| C or other higher languages.
|
| Candidates: Windows X64, Mac Mx ARM, others.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Off-the-top-of-my-head answer: Either of vim and emacs (with
| appropriate variant + choice of add-ons of course) would
| probably work, because those have a lot of generic tools for
| programming language support: syntax highlighting, tagging,
| language server etc. It might not be as convenient (for many)
| as the graphic IDEs, but a lot of people swear by either one of
| these for higher-level languages.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Sorry for the confusion, by saying platform I meant OS and
| architecture, not tools.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| I would recommend windows x86 or Linux x86 or arm/riscv
| (emulator ) Linux mostly because you probably have hundreds
| of resources instead of couple of them whit the other
| platforms
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Absolutely Windows. The win32 API is easy to use in
| assembly and is an easy one line call to createwindow. The
| message loop isn't hard to work with either. Lots of
| tutorials. eg.
| https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/1035362/Simple-Window-
| With-...
|
| I wouldn't go too far past that if your goal is to get the
| hang of it. SDL and the various GUI libraries abstract more
| away but the Win32 API is easy to work with and a good
| starting place. X11 has another layer of complexity as it
| works via sockets and that should be ruled right out.
|
| Having said all of the above i also wouldn't do it beyond
| learning. I've made my own game engines from scratch, i've
| written games in assembly, got them down to a few KB in
| size. No one plays them and i'd have to link to webarchive
| to find them. No one wants to play a very simply game that
| took a lot of effort to make that doesn't even work without
| emulation these days. It doesn't even look good on a
| resume.
|
| You know what i actually use for productivity these days?
| Unreal or Unity.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah I believe Windows asm is probably my best
| bet as the UI part is also well integrated.
|
| This is just for learning purpose. I have a fetish about
| assembly language and want to use it as a daily drive for
| a certain project. Definitely not for work or anything
| money related!
| favorited wrote:
| I'm currently learning assembly programming for the original
| Nintendo Game Boy handheld. There is an actively maintained
| cross-platform toolchain[0] (a few actually, but I believe I'm
| using the most common one), and the instruction set is very
| simple (it's a subset of the Z80) so it's not overwhelming.
|
| The tooling is actually outstanding - from within VS Code I'm
| able to build my ROM, launch it in an emulator, and even
| remotely debug it using VS Code's debugger.
|
| I started by following along with a tutorial[1] where you
| follow along and build a couple games, then moved on to working
| on my own little project. It has been extremely fun and
| rewarding so far.
|
| [0]https://rgbds.gbdev.io [1]https://gbdev.io/gb-asm-tutorial/
| tristor wrote:
| I remember most of these games fondly. My favorite games from the
| old entertainment packs were Pipe Dream, Minesweeper, and Ski
| Free. Was really interesting to see the history here, and how
| slack time created an opportunity for valuable creativity. The
| modern tech company no longer has that sort of slack time, nor
| does it encourage valuable creativity, unfortunately.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I just realized Windows 10 doesn't have minesweeper installed. I
| can't even add it with "Turn Windows Features on or off". What is
| this world coming to?
| a1o wrote:
| I think the default go for solitaire from MS now has either Ads
| or subscription.
| skissane wrote:
| Whenever I feel like playing Solitaire, I just start Windows
| 3.1 in a VM.
| nkali wrote:
| There was a HN thread about this, of course.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40647278
| ycuser2 wrote:
| Efficiency, work, money, progress, rising stocks
| jamieplex wrote:
| Yikes! He wanted $25 for a fish screensaver 35 years ago!! Wild!
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Essentially a suggested donation though and paid by mail. It's
| pretty much the standard shareware price and you can't be too
| mad since you got it for free.
|
| A bit like the old and now well out of date joke "What would
| you do if you won a million dollars?" "Pay for Winrar!".
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