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Infidel goes wild

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jdw64 · 1791155066 · focus · HN ↗
I want to write technically interesting posts like this too, but I don't know how.
My writing is mostly just tracking various internet posts to trace history. How do you create interesting posts based on personal experience like this?
1. ajkjk · 1791156347 · focus · HN ↗
  well first you have personal experiences like that
  or rather: you have personal experiences like whatever your experiences are like, not like theirs, and then you write about them if you think anyone else would also be interested.
  1. jdw64 · 1791159739 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds good. I should reflect on my own experiences too.
2. cindyllm · 1791159262 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
3. zem · 1791159342 · focus · HN ↗
  lately I've been thinking about how something on reddit/hn/lobsters reminds me of an interesting moment from my career, and I write up a small reply about it, and that could conceivably also be a blog post if only I had a blog. and then I do nothing about it :) but that's definitely one way to blog; just take the effort to follow through on random inspirations like that.
  another great route to follow is what julia evans does on her blog [<a href="https://jvns.ca/" rel="nofollow">https://jvns.ca/] - a lot of the posts are "hey, I learnt something new today, and here it is!". the key point is that there is no attempt at having every post be the same "weight", some of them are deep dives into a topic and some are just passing thoughts or howtos.
  1. jdw64 · 1791159719 · focus · HN ↗
    That's practical advice. Thank you.
4. embedding-shape · 1791166209 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. jdw64 · 1791166879 · focus · HN ↗
    Thank you always for the good advice. I should organize things based on the records I've kept, too.
5. 0xDEAFBEAD · 1791179489 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
ironqcold · 1791157009 · focus · HN ↗
Wow. That was interesting.
gertlex · 1791159274 · focus · HN ↗
I've been gradually reading the Digital Antiquarian's series of posts [0] about history of computer games. Many of these feature links to try out these games (I haven't yet gotten to games that were released after I was born)... with user setup required (take this disk image, run it in a Apple II emulator, etc). The history so far has heavily featured text based simple parser adventure games.
This might be the way in which I finally try one of these games out. Though, I'm betting my attention won't last long.
[0] <a href="https://www.filfre.net/the-digital-antiquarian-e-book-library/" rel="nofollow">https://www.filfre.net/the-digital-antiquarian-e-book-librar...
1. gxd · 1791170049 · focus · HN ↗
  I finished all Infocom games during covid (and read all Digital Antiquarian articles since then). Despite being very interested in the games, I knew I wouldn't have energy to literally beat them. So I played with walkthroughs, stopping to examine things and enjoy the scenery, so to speak. There was no challenge, but I still had fun. Somewhat like visiting a museum.
kwertyoowiyop · 1791160106 · focus · HN ↗
Let every 1980s game programmer who never shipped a memory-trashing bug raise their hand.
I thought so! :-)
1. morkalork · 1791161107 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm definitely guilty of writing some sick memory-trashjng bugs when I was first getting started as an intern. The best one had my team lead and a staff engineer puzzling over what the hell was going on. The second best one had someone hunting down my email and messaging me months after the internship ended just to cuss me out haha. Perhaps it is better I don't work in C anymore.
  1. saghm · 1791164680 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you're probably being too hard on yourself. As far as I can tell, the Venn diagram of people who have written non-trivial amounts of C code used in the real world and people who have written memory corruption bugs is a circle.
2. taneq · 1791177380 · focus · HN ↗
  Back in 1999 I somehow managed to make my project du jour (a text editor) crash Windows 95 so hard that after rebooting it popped up a message telling you to reinstall Windows. :D
Waterluvian · 1791162032 · focus · HN ↗
> As a C programmer, I am legally required to regard memory corruption as the worst of all possible sins.
Self-flagellation considered harmful.
ndc · 1791180019 · focus · HN ↗
I used to frequent rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction. There Andrew / Zarf was a regular. Looks like now he is still active in interactive fiction. Salute to him!

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