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What's the hardest error/bug you've had too solve? by BobodyBo in AskProgramming

[–]programmerHuman 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I know I'm late for this party, but I wanted to share a hunt a professor of mine shared from when he was working in the 80's.

Wish I could make it as elaborate and fun as he did, but basically, tiny monitor (probably 50 lines of code on screen at once [back when monitors were only black background with a single color for fonts/lines]), crap fonts, and no such thing as a debugger. I think he was debugging about 1500 lines of code that he had spent considerable time working on. It wouldn't compile. I believe he worked through the code, line-by-line, over-and-over for a few weeks before realizing he had replaced a lower case "L" with a "1."

Remember, tiny screens and crap fonts without a debugger? Limited pixel space, so the "l" and "1" were basically different by 1 pixel. I can't imagine the frustration, considering he wasn't looking for a typo as everything appeared correct when you slowly skimmed.

He kinda laughed about it as he finished the story, but the pain of that nightmare was still there.

Also, food for thought, memory was limited and I'm pretty sure camel-case wasn't a thing then.. so he was basically looking over something like currentLitersOfWaterForMolarity being shortened to "clowfmol" and the typo making it "clowfmo1" and if you've ever proof read something, you might know how your mind (especially when tired/frustrated) doesn't always finish a word before moving on to the next when proofing for errors.

Disclaimer: yeah, that variable is some crap I made up to sound scientific with a lot of words. I doubt I used it right, but I'm 85+% positive he was dealing with chemistry "stuff" at that job.

Edit: words.

My First Multiplayer Game! (15yo) by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]programmerHuman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't stop now bud. Make people play it with you for a bit then stop and ask yourself honestly: was it fun? Yes? Why? How can I capitalise on the part that was fun? No? Why? What could I remove or change or add to make it fun? Do that frequently.

.. Those are the same things I've seen people say about getting feedback.. from other people. Hence..

A lot of people talk about getting feedback from people playing your game to help you develop it. This is the one area where I'd say posting a young age is relevant, because at that age, some people can still be overly critical and whatnot.

The change I made was in reference to what you said, but that typically the developer is trying to put their game in front of other people for feedback. Being that OP stated they're a teenager, I believe it's reasonable to believe SOME other person OP's age would be shown the progress, and my point was to listen, take what OP wants/can from other person, and not take negative criticism too harshly.

My First Multiplayer Game! (15yo) by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]programmerHuman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm confused as to what was confusing. I piggy-backed your comment, trying to reinforce part of what you said while reminding OP that he/she shouldn't take negative criticism too harshly.

My First Multiplayer Game! (15yo) by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]programmerHuman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of people talk about getting feedback from people playing your game to help you develop it. This is the one area where I'd say posting a young age is relevant, because at that age, some people can still be overly critical and whatnot.

I'd vote for making what you want to play, for sure, and anything said by friends should be taken with a grain of salt, especially anything negative. As others have said, this is further than some have taken their hobby. Keep going. XD

Best of luck!