First Post!

Howdy,

Welcome to my blog, Programming While Drunk.

This blog is named after of a time-honoured tradition, established by myself, of programming whilst in various states of intoxication. It is one of the most underrated programming paradigms.

So what is the point of this blog? Well, it is basically a dumping ground for my thoughts and comments on programming, mainly in C, in the hope that someone, somewhere might find this stuff actually useful. Also, I can rant.

If you would like to know something about myself, here it is:

I am not a professional programmer, I am a truck driver. Programming, for me, is a hobby. I started in Microsoft QBASIC at age 14 before moving to Borland Turbo Pascal, where I took my first dip into the world of assembly programming.

I decided to learn C++ when I realised Pascal was dead, before "downgrading" to C, and never looking back. I have a love affair with C. I am not blind to its flaws, but... well - I don't know how to finish that sentence. There is so much I love about C. I still use C++ occasionally, but C is my workhorse.

Not being a professional programmer, I rarely finish any projects. They are in a perpetual state of development. The closest I ever came to a finished project was a real-time 3D Engine for the Texas Instruments TI-83 series of graphing calculators. It is written entirely in Z80 assembly, and has some pretty sophisticated features (given the processor) such as 3D clipping. It's still not finished, but every 18 months or so I get into a groove and get a whole lot of work done. You can check out it's progress here.

I have also dabbled in neural-network AI, resulting in a program I call Neural Bots, with demonstration videos available on YouTube.

At the moment I am working on a BASIC to C compiler for a QBASIC-compatible dialect, which I call "NuBASIC". I found there is already a project called "NuBASIC", but it has been dead for several years, so I am claiming the name. If this project dies, someone else can claim the name.

That's it!