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giogadi

56 karma · joined September 8, 2021

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giogadi··on Ask HN: What's the most fun you've had developing for an older gaming system?
I had a lot of fun making a small hack-n-slash for the Sega Genesis. I did it in pure 68K assembly, but there is also a framework called SGDK that lets you make games in C.

Making a game from scratch in assembly was eye-opening. I used to wonder in amazement how programmers made games in assembly for the 8/16-bit systems, but now I've learned that it's....just programming. It's even pretty fun!

My favorite part of this project was that I had to consult old scans of Sega programming manuals from the 90s in order to do drawing, scrolling, etc. Lots of fun bit operations required to communicate with the hardware back then!

giogadi··on Students invent quieter leaf blower
Congrats to these students for producing a clever solution to a real practical problem! I hope that the students will own the patent, and not the university. Many schools have a way of taking ownership of absolutely anything their students come up with.

That said, I prefer just raking up leaves manually. It makes no noise, it's quiet, and it's good exercise.

giogadi··on I should have loved biology (2020)
I think we could reduce the scope of today's curricula to accommodate this kind of teaching. If students spent a few more months understanding the how of scientific discovery instead of the what, I think it would be a worthwhile trade-off.
giogadi··on A game magazine that spent two years taunting a Final Fantasy VIII hater
The internet needs more websites like this. This is The Good Internet
giogadi··on New York medical school eliminates tuition after $1B gift
We actually already have many loan forgiveness programs for doctors - for example, they can choose to work at an understaffed clinic in a historically underserved area of the country and get huge amounts of their loans forgiven, on top of making a big salary. A lot of these clinics fully depend on this pipeline of doctors needing loan forgiveness. I'm not saying that this an ideal situation, but the loans can sorta encourage many doctors to practice where they are most needed.
giogadi··on Ask HN: What is new in algorithms and data structures these days?
IMO the hip new thing in algorithms and data structures is to Just Use Arrays For Everything
giogadi··on SushiDAO served with subpoena by SEC
I initially thought this was a joke website about trading in literal sushi. After a few minutes on the website I'm still thinking it's a joke
giogadi··on High-documentation, low-meeting work culture
"Just write quality software"

That's quite a load-bearing "just" there.

giogadi··on The Science of Scientific Writing (1990)
This is the single most influential article on ALL my professional communication. Before reading this article I used to consider my emails/documents/etc finished as soon as they included all of the content I wanted to cover. This taught me empathy for the reader in writing. And if writing can help the writer clarify their ideas, then clarifying your writing can even improve how you organize your own thoughts.