Comment Broken Dreams (Score 1) 1540
For me, the whole thing started when I was a young, bright eyed boy with delusions of being a programmer one day. I was always fascinated by computers, and was supported in my growing interest by my parents, who bought me my first commodore 64 for chirstmas. From that day I was hooked, and I tried BASIC and all the rest (played games too, but who dosen't), and it seemed that the sky was the limit. I tried my hand at graphics programming, with some amount of success.
The problems started however when I went and bought a PC. Everything got harder real quick. Of course I just thought that this was because this was a more "sophisticated" machine than the old commodore, with it's intuitive user interface ("put disk in drive") and easy to learn syntax (10 print 'hello' 20 goto 10). So obviously this monstrous machine with it's peripheral printer and fancy mouse would be more of a challenge. I figured that, down the line, some underlying logic would make itself apparent, and I would again be able to surf the creative waves of programmer heaven.
However, no logic made itself apparent. Sure, there were bits of logic, scattered hither and yon like wounded soldiers on a battlefield, weeping for their mother. But like those soldiers, these fragments of logic were lost and directionless and had no real reason for being there apart from the Demon Lord of Backward Compatibility and his minions the Deadlines of Fate and Versions of Mayhem. At times it seemed like I was having an ongoing conversation with the computer:
Computer : "You can't access memory over 1mb"
Me : "Why?"
Computer : "I don't know"
Computer : "You can't do that."
Me : "Why?"
Computer : "No reason. Just 'cause."
It started to occur to me on an intuitive level that there oughtta be a better way for things to work. I mean, the reasons for the way things work didn't seem like any kinda good reason, they sounded more like someone had just made them up because they had a deadline to catch and didn't want to put the work in to make the product the way it should be. But this didn't make sense, because what kind of person wouldn't put the work in? Who would go and create an operating system if they didn't love their work the way I did? Who would get into computer programming just for the money? What kind of money was in it anyway? Look at me, I was actively losing money trying to program, having saved up all my money to buy this beast in the first place.
So I started to believe that the fault must be mine. That there were in fact very good reasons for all the contradictory logic, I just wasn't intelligent enough to understand what they were. I was stupid.
And then came the crunch. I worked like a son of a bitch, got myself into college, taught myself some languages, and got the computer to grind out sprites that were easily as fast if not faster than contemporary platform games. Horay for me, I spend a whole summer in a bathrode poring over assembly language printouts. God knows why my girlfriend stayed with me.
And then they released Windows 95.
Bastards.
But I had it working. It worked, look at it, it's so beautiful.
But we don't want that old DOS crap any more, we have these things called 3D accellerators that we want to plug in to.
Well, ok, if you say so. Bye bye assembly language.
Let's see what this new fangled internet connection I have in college has to say about how to program in windows 95...
jesus... ... and then I have to do what?... ...em...
Where do I get one of them? .. I have to BUY it? How much?.
But I don't have that much money I'm a student. Em, mister dean, can I have a copy of... no? Ok.
.
So at the tender age of 19 I came to understand that if I wanted to surf the creative program waves or whatever the hell, I would not only need access to funding beyond what I was capable of, but also have to climb up the learning curve ladder that had taken so much off me in the past. Again.
Oh, you'd better believe I tried. I got some stuff to run in directX even. But don't get me started on directx in its early years. Just don't, that's a whole other rant. Or the windows API, or the MFC classes, or pretty much anything in the MS development circle.
Synopsis (for those of you who are still reading):
The creativity and beauty that attracted so many of us to computer science in the first place has gotten shat on by the shoddy lazy greedy work of those who would be industry leaders. Having no choice or option in operating systems meant that if we wanted our good work to be seem by the masses, we had to conform to the strictures and crazy logic rules laid down by people who are much lazier and less interested in what they do than us. Who, in fact, have no interest in us or our goals. If no monopoly existed and real competition drove the market, we might have been spared all those years of deadening infuriating stress.
I have recently discovered linux and the open source movement. Myself and my doctor, Dr Linus Torvalds, spend one hour twice a week working on my sanity and general emotional health and wellbeing.
He's a very good doctor.
The problems started however when I went and bought a PC. Everything got harder real quick. Of course I just thought that this was because this was a more "sophisticated" machine than the old commodore, with it's intuitive user interface ("put disk in drive") and easy to learn syntax (10 print 'hello' 20 goto 10). So obviously this monstrous machine with it's peripheral printer and fancy mouse would be more of a challenge. I figured that, down the line, some underlying logic would make itself apparent, and I would again be able to surf the creative waves of programmer heaven.
However, no logic made itself apparent. Sure, there were bits of logic, scattered hither and yon like wounded soldiers on a battlefield, weeping for their mother. But like those soldiers, these fragments of logic were lost and directionless and had no real reason for being there apart from the Demon Lord of Backward Compatibility and his minions the Deadlines of Fate and Versions of Mayhem. At times it seemed like I was having an ongoing conversation with the computer:
Computer : "You can't access memory over 1mb"
Me : "Why?"
Computer : "I don't know"
Computer : "You can't do that."
Me : "Why?"
Computer : "No reason. Just 'cause."
It started to occur to me on an intuitive level that there oughtta be a better way for things to work. I mean, the reasons for the way things work didn't seem like any kinda good reason, they sounded more like someone had just made them up because they had a deadline to catch and didn't want to put the work in to make the product the way it should be. But this didn't make sense, because what kind of person wouldn't put the work in? Who would go and create an operating system if they didn't love their work the way I did? Who would get into computer programming just for the money? What kind of money was in it anyway? Look at me, I was actively losing money trying to program, having saved up all my money to buy this beast in the first place.
So I started to believe that the fault must be mine. That there were in fact very good reasons for all the contradictory logic, I just wasn't intelligent enough to understand what they were. I was stupid.
And then came the crunch. I worked like a son of a bitch, got myself into college, taught myself some languages, and got the computer to grind out sprites that were easily as fast if not faster than contemporary platform games. Horay for me, I spend a whole summer in a bathrode poring over assembly language printouts. God knows why my girlfriend stayed with me.
And then they released Windows 95.
Bastards.
But I had it working. It worked, look at it, it's so beautiful.
But we don't want that old DOS crap any more, we have these things called 3D accellerators that we want to plug in to.
Well, ok, if you say so. Bye bye assembly language.
Let's see what this new fangled internet connection I have in college has to say about how to program in windows 95...
jesus...
Where do I get one of them?
But I don't have that much money I'm a student. Em, mister dean, can I have a copy of... no? Ok.
.
So at the tender age of 19 I came to understand that if I wanted to surf the creative program waves or whatever the hell, I would not only need access to funding beyond what I was capable of, but also have to climb up the learning curve ladder that had taken so much off me in the past. Again.
Oh, you'd better believe I tried. I got some stuff to run in directX even. But don't get me started on directx in its early years. Just don't, that's a whole other rant. Or the windows API, or the MFC classes, or pretty much anything in the MS development circle.
Synopsis (for those of you who are still reading):
The creativity and beauty that attracted so many of us to computer science in the first place has gotten shat on by the shoddy lazy greedy work of those who would be industry leaders. Having no choice or option in operating systems meant that if we wanted our good work to be seem by the masses, we had to conform to the strictures and crazy logic rules laid down by people who are much lazier and less interested in what they do than us. Who, in fact, have no interest in us or our goals. If no monopoly existed and real competition drove the market, we might have been spared all those years of deadening infuriating stress.
I have recently discovered linux and the open source movement. Myself and my doctor, Dr Linus Torvalds, spend one hour twice a week working on my sanity and general emotional health and wellbeing.
He's a very good doctor.
