Keeping a diary?

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Hey guys,
As you know I recently started to learn game programming. It’s been tough for me.
I imagined this might happen with most of, in not all of the newcomers.
So I thought if I keep a diary (Not daily, let’s call this log) about how I progress, what I do, what obstacles I met and how I overcame them, if I did; and stuff like that. So that any other noobie can come and read what I did, how stupid I was and how I got smarter (if that happens).

I’m planning to link to other sites as well as our wiki, recommend books and maybe put some nice/faulty/good/bad code snippets here about what I do. The codes will be original and there will be no copyright issues.
And if I directly use any codes from another sites, I’ll ask the author if it is okay and credit the author. This is something I care about, because I used to be a technology news site editor for a while and I know how it feels to see your hard work on another site, with another person’s signature :slight_smile:

Is it cool if I keep the diary here, as a thread? It may include everything, mini-tutorials, my own ideas about how stuff goes, my daily life… Anything.

If this is okay, in which section should I start one? If it is not cool, please delete the thread :slight_smile: And let me know about this of course.

#2

While I can’t say that keeping a log is a bad thing, I’ve found that simply keeping ALL of my projects and looking back at them if I feel like it is a log enough for me.

#3

I imagine the Work In Progress forum is appropriate for developer diaries, long as it’s java game related. Go for it.

#4

After my exam this Monday and if I have a moderator approval by then, I’ll start something like that.

#5

I agree there. With Eclipse I can click delete to get rid of a project in my package explorer, but the project is still in the files and thus I never completely get rid of it. If I ever really need to see my old code I can also find it, and remember what I did.

#6

Same goes for me too. I still have my hello world and if-statement codes :smiley:

#7

I would still archive them on an external drive if I were you. I lost plenty of valuable reference code thinking exactly this. But perhaps you have a more generalized backup system already in place of course.

#8

I would say a diary would be a good motivator tool, but also keep your old code to look back upon and realize how far you have come. I frequently do it when I run into bugs in my code, and I’m frustrated. When I look at my old code, I realize that its possible to figure out whats wrong. If I didn’t have my old code, I would probably be a lot more frustrated everyday!

It also helps because I frequently forget how to do something, so I look through my old stuff and I usually can find something that helps me :wink:

#9

Guys, I did not mean to ask if it is good to keep a diary for my programming.

I do this. Like I said, even my hello world code (which is, as you can predict, just 3-4 lines) is on my hard drive. And actually its project is called 001 - HelloJava :smiley:

This is not my first programming forum. I got advice from other people in other forums. One told me that he is a Java programmer for 12 years and he still looks at his past codes and fixes and optimizes it. That lead me to start from the beginning and come to where I am now. I have all of my codes. This includes my string concatenating classes :slight_smile:

I just wanted to keep a diary here on the forum about my game programming learning process. For example, I am having a hard time comprehending the complex game loops and if/when I figure this out, I’d just write this here so that the other noobies can understand it quickly or maybe they don’t feel alone or stupid :slight_smile:

I am assuming that at least one moderator read this thread and since they did not say anything about it, I’ll keep my ideas to myself.

This thread can go to thrash bin if needed :slight_smile:

#10

You know, you might consider writing that diary as an article? At the beginning, it’ll be rough. But, in the end, it might end up being a great pool of relevant information for pitfalls and errors for newbies.

Just a thought?

#11

This is a good idea. I haven’t taken a look at game programming (life requested something else), but I can start writing a diary and publish it later. Maybe it becomes a wiki here or just a blog entry somewhere else.

I’ll consider this. Thanks. I’ll create my “GameProgDiaryInJava.docx” now :stuck_out_tongue: