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Comment by trishume | Hacker News Reader

Well I hoped to be on HN today for my high-effort blog post on generics and metaprogramming (http://thume.ca/2019/07/14/a-tour-of-metaprogramming-models-...) but at least I'm on HN for something :P

Edit: And at least right before I go to bed my post technically made it on the front page in the very last slot :)

I'm also glad people like my ray tracer, it was super satisfying to build, and nice to have a project that I know I put substantial effort into and can really be proud of.

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You're in the very first slot now. Congrats, this is super impressive, both in implementation and documentation.

Oops! Your tweet about that blog post was in my feed but I clicked your profile and saw your pinned tweet about your path tracer, so I submitted it. It is quite impressive and you did a good job writing it up.

Oh no way, you're Tristan Hume! My high school science research project was based on the eye tracking thing you made a while back :)

Cool, I actually wrote that eye tracking thing back when I was in high school myself. It's cool that people still find it useful, it's definitely not up to my current quality standards, but I remember scouring the internet for something like it back then and not finding anything so I guess nobody else has put something better online since.

Would love to see a link to what you are talking about

Probably https://github.com/trishume/eyeLike

Yup. Was a lazy Google on that one. Here’s his blog entry on it: http://thume.ca/projects/2012/11/04/simple-accurate-eye-cent...

In - fucking - credible, the amount of attention to detail in your implementation and in compositing the scene.

I haven't read the meta programming thing yet but I really enjoyed reading the thing about the path tracer.

I'm completely amazed this was accomplished in one month's time.

Great stuff! Aside from having the technical chops, you've done a remarkable job documenting your work, and honing your writing.

Ayyyy, CS488. Lovely renders, and great write-up! What learnings from this assignment/course do you feel will be the most useful in future projects (graphics or otherwise)?

P.S. I wish Trains (CS452) had something so demo-able. ;)

For those curious, CS452 is Real-Time Programming:

https://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs452/

Hah you’re obviously capable. Some big firm will scoop you up no problem.

Truly capable people rarely want to be “scooped up by some big firm”, much less “no problem”.

I meant someone with the op’s skills will have companies vying for and paying handsomely for

Half of Google's employees would probably disagree with you.

Half of google’s engineers are 3D graphics aficionados and can make compelling 3D scenes? There’s a scale of programmer out there: and whatever that scale is for you I put those who canary physics and computer graphics at the top.

Given your nickname that reads like you would put yourself at the top. Programming is programming. I've done 3D graphics, real time machine control, OS development, device drivers, game engines and whatever else I've come across in my professional career to date and none of it struck me as being on a different scale as other software development: it all boils down to meticulously specifying your thinking to a machine so that it can repeat what you dreamed up at a much higher speed than a human ever could.

The person that comes up with a sorting algorithm is not on some different scale than the person that makes a game or controls a machine. BTW, I'm not quite sure how to interpret the bird in your sentence.

Ahh then I’m still a novice programmer at this stage and overestimated something I don’t even have the math to be able to do.

And nope, I wouldn’t know where to start to do anything in 3D graphics. But I can throw together a microservice API

You’re also the first in a very long time to figure out where my handle comes from. I was so intrigued by reading about the first graphics card capable of hardware transform and lighting (GeForce 256)

I built a device driver for the BBC micro for one of the earliest 2D graphics accelerators. Computer graphics and acceleration are super interesting sub-fields.

I used that exact card to do real time rendering of simulated toolpaths for a 3D mill. That was mind-blowing at the time, to have an array of voxels large enough that you could do something meaningful with it and to be able to display the results as it was running.

That’s really awesome! I spent my early years playing games and then building computers before taking up programming.

Many people I have listened to started with basic and programming at an early age.

the metaprogramming post is very, very good, btw, thank you

I also have a tungsten cube, although I rather like the archaic name wolfram. I fully second your 10/10 recommendation. Best paperweight I ever owned.

Oh yeah and your webpage has plenty of other great pieces too. Thanks for this!

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