After almost a decade of programming computers, I must say that I kind of miss the fun that I had with the whole programming thing ever since I went into the competitive programming circuit. Now that I've retired from the programming circuit, and am actually writing non-trivial and interesting programs (like a memory manager, a shell and a proxy among other things), I realise that I missed that fun so much. The fun of staying up at odd hours of the day, writing code in a paradoxical juxtaposition of concentration and relaxation, the sudden clarity in the way the code is supposed to look like even without thinking too much—ah, I clearly missed this feeling. And now, as I am slowly putting together my multi-threaded web proxy program, I find that the old feelings are all coming back again. I'm... actually at a loss of words somewhat when I'm trying to describe the delight that I have in the whole exercise.
At least, I'm writing programs that actually do something useful, not those silly Java programs that do frivolous things like performing single-source shortest path computations. I realise that at the end of the day, I'm pretty much still a hacker who loves systems programming. All those new-fangled and flashy programming languages never did appeal to me much; I love to just write my code in C, which is simple and [somewhat] elegant for the tasks at hand. Firing up vim in an xterm set with the smallest possible fonts which maintain at least 160 characters of width and yet still visible a good 4 feet away, the light tap-tap on the keyboard when I write line after line of working code with little/no debugging required—this is pure bliss.
Next semester will be much more fun, since I'm going to do a course on Parallel Computer Architectures and Programming. Messing around with multi-core processors on supercomputers and hypercomputers just make me drool with anticipation. You can probably say that this is a hacker's wet dream come true. While most of the other folks want to take O/S, I actually prefer doing the course on parallel architectures. Apart from the obvious applicability of that course (how often does one have to write an operating system from scratch?), I find that it is much more interesting as a whole as compared to writing an operating system for the nuances and quirks of a particular [complicated] microprocessor. I'd love to do kernel hacking, but definitely not under the contraints of time and for credit—it is suicidal.
Oh that aside, remember this problem? So Atari support replied today with the 3 correct CD keys. Which means that my Neverwinter Nights installation is working now. Hurray~! But first, I need to finish quite a fair bit of homework before I can even sit down and try it out.
Hmm... there's a Kiltie Band Christmas Concert on Thursday. And I think I'm the only guy in the flute section. No pressure, I'm a decent flutist hahahaha... Alright, it is getting late, and I'd like to catch up on some rest before working on even more homework.
Good night/day (depending on where you are).
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