2009ish

I am old, so this tracks ;)

I love hitting these things in the real world. Not the big, but the comment. You just know someone spent a fortune in time and company resources to never solve the problem and their frustration level was ragequit. But then something stupid like adding

while (0){};

Suddenly made it work and they were like, fuckit.

Usually it’s a bug somewhere in a compiler trying to over optimize or something and putting the line in there caused the optimization not to happen or something. Black magic.

The downside is that the compiler bug probably gets fixed, and then decades later the comment and line are still there…

https://xkcd.com/979/

Depending on the carrot, the skin can be significantly more bitter. And sometimes peeling can be quicker than trying to scrub dirt out of particular lumpy carrots.

YMMV

It was designed from its very start to be used for numerical computing. So the language it built around it and it sort of excels in that use case.

This used to be the holy bible of numerical methods, if you want to see some sample code: https://s3.amazonaws.com/nrbook.com/book_F210.html

A lot of the underlying libraries in python are actually written in Fortran (or were when they were conceived, and the Fortran components later replaced). Numpy, for example, was originally pretty much a wrapper on top of BLAS and LAPACK.

This gets even more complex if you’re using a toolkit of some sort. C++ has a batteries-included way of doing something, then STL has another, and Qt yet another… Etc.

Don’t get me wrong. There is still a time and a place for Fortran. And this will also likely always be the case for C++. But I’m not sure it is entirely wise to choose it if you’re creating a new project anymore.

I’ve done a bit of C++ coding in my time. The feature list of the language is so long at this point that it is pretty much impossible for anyone new to learn C++ and grok the design decisions anymore. I don’t know if this is a good thing or not to keep adding and extending or whether C++ should sail into the sunset like Fortran and others before it.

Yeah, that’s a good option perhaps. I grabbed em recent because of a steam sale, but never played them before. Appreciate the rec :)

I’ve never heard of this, so it is perfect as a recommendation! Because now I have something to look into :)

I’ve played all the old school Square and Enix stuff. FF6 is my goat.

Sure. Tales games tend to be high fantasy settings where each game is its own setting (much like Final Fantasy in that sense). They tend to have a lot of “war against heaven corrupted” kind of vibes. But largely there’s a lot of places to explore, NPCs to talk to, and a bunch of great little skits that trigger between your team. They tend to be lighter on graphics in exchange for length and depth of story. But it’s also somewhat linear, and carefully crafted and you can sort of lose yourself in finding the next story beat.

But they also typically have active combat systems where it’s about button mashing and combos. This is the part I don’t like :)

No! I’ve heard it is quite the investment if you want to start at the beginning. Is there a later jumping in point that works well, in your opinion?

https://numerical.recipes/

The current version is in C++

But if you check the link above, the older C and Fortran editions are free to read. This is the gold standard for numerical algorithms and scientific computing, without getting into things like GPUs and such.

Electron for physics apps? Yuck! that’s basically just web dev with local hosting. Like, try six million datapoints and plotting them in electron.

Making a web app is a mistake 9 times out of 10, particularly when dealing with larger datasets. Because you’re in physics, you probably want to skills you’re learning to be transferable into physics and data science in general.

I recommend starting with python (if you know it already, awesome), then checking out pyqtgraph – there’s a bunch of demo apps that come with the package and you can use those as launch points. This will be your gateway into pyqt/pyside and legit desktop application development. Later, if you learn C++, you can transition into Qt (and still use all the power of the toolkit and the skills are transferable), or into raw C++ which is amazing for numerical computing.

I don’t understand how authoritarian leaning conservatives and free speech absolutists align most of the time.

This is such an interesting development. I bet a lot of dirty laundry is about to be aired.