Object Oriented Pool games
I apologize to those of you that thought I was an artist
A brief summary:
I got a tattoo
I joined a pool league
I've studied for, but haven't yet taken or passed, the Java Programming certification test
I'm moving next month
Object oriented programming is what one could call the natural, assembly-line evolution of coding: expect the least from any individual coder and have the person who architects the project take a big, hard problem and turn it into an arbitrarily large set of small, easy ones. I'm sure there are people who read this journal who will disagree and I welcome their views, but I'm not really going for the truth here.
I'm moving into the lower floor of the Kave, making me the downstairs neighbor of Dee and Jaye, in about a month.
I've joined one of the M8 pool leagues that my parents belong to and I'm basically taking weekly asswhippings so far. This is an indicator that I should practice. I'm also having a good time. It's not all bad.
I took the week of my birthday off (coincidentally, also the less celebrated week of the new year,) and spent my days shooting pool, studying Java and getting a tattoo on my forearm that reads "Παθος" or "Pathos", only in Greek letters. Each was a new (ish) experience (I've never had a tattoo, I haven't studied for a programming exam since college and I haven't been part of a team-based individual sport since my fencing and math team days in high school,) and each has as a result colored succeeding experiences in new ways.
LPC and Pike aside, all of the programming I do for my job is better termed scripting and tends toward being write-once-run-once stuff that doesn't really give you any appreciation for the basics. It's all implementation of convenient interfaces that the better programmers who came before decided to create as a time-saving maneuver. I've certainly done object-based programming before, in college, but Java is a little different. It generally ruthlessly enforces object-based thinking and at very least gently encourages full-on object oriented programming in the "protect your fucking variables" and "don't just drop in a default if that isn't what you mean" and an "eat you goddamned vegetables" sort of way. There's a constant, if tacit, insistence that you should limit access to member data to the class that implements it (and maybe it's children) and that other programmers should be able to simply drop your code into theirs without looking at it and take advantage of the easy interfaces that you've put forward for them without having to worry about what they've written breaking when you change the implementation details of what you've written. Which, I guess I can appreciate as a systems administrator, if not as someone that need to deal with code every day for a living.
The thing that put me off playing chess at a tournament level (if there was a "thing", instead of a general apathy and burned-out-ness for the game) was hating doing things in public. Especially competing in public, especially competing and knowing that I was making stupid mistakes because I was nervous. I don't actually like in-the-spotlight competition even when I'm sitting at home - I didn't really like serious, competition-level TFC, or formal competitions and guild functions on Nanny - I just don't appear to like anything where I'm good enough to be there, but not good enough to know that I won't make a fool of myself from some highly analyzable position. So pool is hell. First off, because I'm always the least experienced player there. I've never taken pool seriously and I've only started to be good enough to really even see how I could beat someone. I'm years of bad pool behind the weakest players and that's not going to change in the week I have before my next match.
Playing league pool has retaught me the humility that playing chess did initially, at least a little bit. Learning Java has taught me that languages like Perl that respond to a change in environment by giving bad output rather than throwing meaningful exceptions yield projects that can quickly become unmanageable piles of hard to tease apart code.
The point? I'm moving out of my parent's place (for the third time) at the end of next week, approximately; this means more money spent on rent, booze and pool halls.
A brief summary:
I got a tattoo
I joined a pool league
I've studied for, but haven't yet taken or passed, the Java Programming certification test
I'm moving next month
Object oriented programming is what one could call the natural, assembly-line evolution of coding: expect the least from any individual coder and have the person who architects the project take a big, hard problem and turn it into an arbitrarily large set of small, easy ones. I'm sure there are people who read this journal who will disagree and I welcome their views, but I'm not really going for the truth here.
I'm moving into the lower floor of the Kave, making me the downstairs neighbor of Dee and Jaye, in about a month.
I've joined one of the M8 pool leagues that my parents belong to and I'm basically taking weekly asswhippings so far. This is an indicator that I should practice. I'm also having a good time. It's not all bad.
I took the week of my birthday off (coincidentally, also the less celebrated week of the new year,) and spent my days shooting pool, studying Java and getting a tattoo on my forearm that reads "Παθος" or "Pathos", only in Greek letters. Each was a new (ish) experience (I've never had a tattoo, I haven't studied for a programming exam since college and I haven't been part of a team-based individual sport since my fencing and math team days in high school,) and each has as a result colored succeeding experiences in new ways.
LPC and Pike aside, all of the programming I do for my job is better termed scripting and tends toward being write-once-run-once stuff that doesn't really give you any appreciation for the basics. It's all implementation of convenient interfaces that the better programmers who came before decided to create as a time-saving maneuver. I've certainly done object-based programming before, in college, but Java is a little different. It generally ruthlessly enforces object-based thinking and at very least gently encourages full-on object oriented programming in the "protect your fucking variables" and "don't just drop in a default if that isn't what you mean" and an "eat you goddamned vegetables" sort of way. There's a constant, if tacit, insistence that you should limit access to member data to the class that implements it (and maybe it's children) and that other programmers should be able to simply drop your code into theirs without looking at it and take advantage of the easy interfaces that you've put forward for them without having to worry about what they've written breaking when you change the implementation details of what you've written. Which, I guess I can appreciate as a systems administrator, if not as someone that need to deal with code every day for a living.
The thing that put me off playing chess at a tournament level (if there was a "thing", instead of a general apathy and burned-out-ness for the game) was hating doing things in public. Especially competing in public, especially competing and knowing that I was making stupid mistakes because I was nervous. I don't actually like in-the-spotlight competition even when I'm sitting at home - I didn't really like serious, competition-level TFC, or formal competitions and guild functions on Nanny - I just don't appear to like anything where I'm good enough to be there, but not good enough to know that I won't make a fool of myself from some highly analyzable position. So pool is hell. First off, because I'm always the least experienced player there. I've never taken pool seriously and I've only started to be good enough to really even see how I could beat someone. I'm years of bad pool behind the weakest players and that's not going to change in the week I have before my next match.
Playing league pool has retaught me the humility that playing chess did initially, at least a little bit. Learning Java has taught me that languages like Perl that respond to a change in environment by giving bad output rather than throwing meaningful exceptions yield projects that can quickly become unmanageable piles of hard to tease apart code.
The point? I'm moving out of my parent's place (for the third time) at the end of next week, approximately; this means more money spent on rent, booze and pool halls.