Programming Is Just A Fun Little Game
It is a back and forth, you want somethingâŚ
And the computer, really, does not want you to have it.
And the moment you want something extraâŚ
The battle begins, once you win.
You search for another battle, something that will teach you more.
And everything has a beginning, and to get to itâŚ
You have to stick your foot, in the door.
To stick your foot, in the doorâŚ
Means, prepare your computer.
Up to a point, where you have a Hello World.
It is tradition, that a language, gives you a Hello World example.
You canât just SHIFT+CTRL+I, and type in console.log(âHello Worldâ).
You need a code editor, and a starter project.
And a little README , that reminds you what to do next time.
I recommend learning JavaScript, and using a code editor named Pulsar.
But I always regret, not spending more time with vim.
Or vi improved, an old school editor with fun key combinations.
I donât like editors I canât make myself, but I never have time.
Once you have your foot in the door, and your code editor of choice is blinking at you.
A good beginning, is just a mix of tutorials.
Some people like making games, others may care for animations.
I sat down to creating, a Layout Manager today.
I am creating window like things, for a visual programming language.
And I like the idea of HBox and VBox, which are containers of buttons and labels and such.
The HBox aligns everything horizontally, and the VBox vertically.
And the trick to make a window, or a useful design, is to nedt VBoxes and HBoxes.
So a standard window is a VBox, where everything is stacked vertically.
Until you get to your menu items, or icon bar.
That needs to be done with an HBox. to Horizontally lay everything out.
The math for this is super easy, you just add up heights of nested things together.
What caught my attention, is dynamic resizing.
Not just when the menu, for example, is hidden.
But when things, just change shape.
I am thus not easily able to add numbers, I have to observe them for changes first.
It is easy to recalculate a container, when something is added to IT.
But things go nuts, when a container several levels deep resizes.
You donât know dimensions ahead of time, you have to efficiently and recursively observe everything.
The part that makes things like this fun, aside from puzzle solving.
Is the greater picture, re-sizable windows mean, I can create a sticky notes in my program.
And let the users resize them, to match the text content.
The picture beyond that, is a color picker for AI generated UI Kits and Web Site Designs.
Users can drop any number of cross hairs, of their image, and the node will make an output socket for each.
I am sure that will require window resizing, in strange ways.
Once you get programming, you get into these multi level âgamesâ.
And it is all a heck of a lot of fun, when you make progress and learn new things.