I've got my Linux properly working this time, so I'm going to try and write something worth talking about. I'm going to get a fully working SDL Pong clone up and running if it kills me, working AI and everything.
I've been a little bogged down with Uni life, but my coding's something for the summer evenings (I'm getting a job, so very likely no holiday for me this year [sad]). I might be buying a second hand iMac 2 off our CompSci department - it's supposedly about 4 years old, and it's got Tiger. Each year, a CS lab here gets upgraded, and it's rumoured the Second Year Mac lab is the next one to get gutted.
On a side note, I hate Java. We've been learning it intensely at University, but I can't stand it. You can't get away with any sort of hackery, all your old C++ tricks to dodge round certain problems just cause the Java compiler to die a horrible painful death. And the Sun JavaDoc system is an absolute nightmare - you can't find useful information on anything, and spend long periods of time failing miserably. Thirdly, we're forced to use Eclipse: absolutely horrible. It's hellishly slow to respond to anything whatsoever (why didn't they write the IDE in C++?), clumsy, overcomplicated, and cluttered. I'd like to start coding within half a minute of clicking the Eclipse icon, not half a century. I followed my tutor's advice, and I'm turning into a fan of firing up a UNIX shell and running javac.
But anyhoo, C++ is far nicer to look at also. Java just tries to dress everything up for you, but it just feels horrible. I don't like the idea of it forcing you into a rigid OO paradigm, I like the freedom to do things as I choose.
Right, time to properly design my reusable SDL framework (drag-and-drop into every SDL project, it'll save time in future).
Bye for now.
