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Comment by davrosthedalek | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many young people were inspired to take up programming because of the work of Future Crew, Farbrausch and the like. I certainly was, after experiencing what FC did with Second Reality. Props to Farbrausch for publishing so much of their code.

In some sense, getting 1k colors out of a CGA is the contra-movement to node.js :)

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Farbrausch definitely inspired me to get into programming, just so I could program something 3D. Learning how to program was the easy part; figuring out how 3D graphics work was harder, because of all the complicated math/algebra involved. I eventually got some lit and textured polys going, and some shadow mapping (even wrote the Wikipedia article on it), then gave up and settled for web programming. (Hey look, WebGL!)

I'm very excited and intimidated by WebGL and other graphics/animation platforms for the web. It's something I've always been very interested in but I don't have any clue on how any of it works. I think it will probably always remain mostly separate from the type of typical web dev work I do, but I still want to learn it.

That's what three.js is for <o/

I always found that matrix algebra and that stuff is so much easier to learn with 3d graphics. You can see what it is doing.

Almost any math is easier when you have a use for it.

Future Crew and their Second Reality got me into demo scene back in 90s! Those were the days when we coded proof of concept demo effects which we later optimized using inline assembly in Borland C++. Shouts go out to Asphyxia for great demo-programming tutorials.

To stay on topic, what is the true news value here?

Anyone know of some good/great demo-programming tutorials of similar quality for the modern age? I teach kids programming (and math and stuff) at a youth centre, and some of them are wicked smart and would dig this like I digged it when I was their age.

But I can't really expect them to go pixel-bashing in the ancient Turbo Pascal IDE (regardless how great it is), nor do I believe that `mov ax, 13h; int 10h` still even works on modern OSes, without an emulator ;-)

I got one of them coding a cool interference circles effect and a Mandelbrot-zoomer in Processing. It's Java without the boilerplate to get a window and gfx primitives, which is just great. But afaik nobody in the scene uses it. It is used by digital/generative artists, but they often have the hardware power to get away with inefficient Java implementations (nor is their work always as "shiny" as demoscene productions, demoscene always[0] aims to impress, digital art can have diferent motivations).

BTW--just to gloat a bit here--I saw .kkrieger at the big screen on BP04 when it was released whoohoo ahem

[0] yes there are exceptions but no they don't win parties :-p

Oh, you young ones.

Back in the day on the Atari ST it was all assembly because C was just too slow.

https://youtu.be/cpezr7puRFo

None of my stuff was included because it really wasn't good enough.

Also the guy who did most of the music for the Synergy Megademo, Joris de Man, went on to do music and sound effects for Killzone and lately Horizon: Zero Dawn. So proud of him.

"In some sense, getting 1k colors out of a CGA is the contra-movement to node.js"

Is it?

I have the feeling node.js development has the same spirit, getting some tech (JS) to do something it was never ment to do.

Superficially yes. But there's no real difficulty to one of those problems, and amazing fascinating difficulty to the other.

Getting JavaScript to work as a server side language is about as challenging as getting a crew cab pickup truck to work as a 2 passenger commuting vehicle. [1]

The kinds of things done in demoscene (such as kkrieger) are more like finding a way to use a motorcycle to haul several tons of cargo. (Is that even possible? I don't know, but "Is that even possible?" is PRECISELY the feeling demoscene stuff evokes in the user. It is art.)

[1]: I'm gonna get in trouble here so I have to say: I don't mean this as an insult to nodejs, since difficulty has nothing to do with utility. But way before nodejs, any novice programmer could have put together such a thing in a weekend by gluing libraries together (e.g., Java had a JavaScript engine for a long time, and that's probably how I would have done it). What nodejs accomplishes is creating a way for people who only have learned JavaScript, of which there are many due to the web, to immediately add server-side coding to their abilities without having to learn a whole new language. I wouldn't use nodejs for my own work, but making programming more accessible is always good.

I give you that, but I would say JS is not great for "Getting more with less", which is certainly a goal of these productions.

I guess, it would be possbile to get more with less, but yes this doesn't seem to be the goal with node.js :)

>>getting some tech (JS) to do something it was never ment to do

That's pretty much my reaction to the entire modern WWW. What started as a way to serve some simple static text has evolved into something that is truly amazing. Using a modern "webapp" like Fusion 360 (3D CAD) is a miracle of technology.

Oh man, I haven't thought about Future Crew in a long time. Brings back fond memories.

Here's a nice nostalgia hit to throw on in the background while you're coding: https://archive.org/details/futurecrew-metropolis

I absolutely started programming because of Future Crew's Second Reality (and MajorMUD).

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