innocenat

In case you do not know assembly, let me introduce it briefly. x86 Assembly, which is mnemonic version of underlying x86 machine code, has two main syntax: AT&T syntax (or GAS syntax) and Intel syntax.

PHP is probably the most hated programming language, ever. Yet it is so widely used, easy to write and easy to deploy that most programmers nowadays have to learn it at some point.

Unless you count pure HTML, PHP is what introduced me to programming world years ago. Back then I don’t know better, and PHP is so easy to write that I begin to commit to it. I do have a few big project written in PHP (not open sourced). Not for long, I begin experiencing nightmares of PHP, first being magic_quotes. I need to implement a lot of workarounds, but I still use PHP because back then (and even now), many shared hosters only support PHP. (I just use VPS now, though)

It is great to have some plan, right? Over next few years, I plan to challenge my skills by various independent projects, which I will list here in no particular order. Some of these projects are very hard, yes, and I am not even sure if can complete them all (some may very well over my skill), but all of them will be a very good challenge.

“I write Assembly”

When I say that, people usually think: “Hey, you are pro as f**k programmer”. Yes, I am not kidding; I have too many people saying that to me, and it is completely opposite of what I am.

I am beginner programmer. In everything. Yes, I have freaking 8 years experience, but that doesn’t really make me good programmer, isn’t it? I don’t have enough experience working in teams for large project, working under pressure and such. And knowledge will only get you so far.

Okay, to be honest I am not really writing Assembly nor is an assembly programmer, because I don’t know how to write .asm file. But that isn’t really matter (I have always been using intrinsics function, but more on that later). [Edit: 26/6/2014: I know how to now]

You could says I live behind the rock in Javascript world in past two years. I recently developed Typing Mania in pure Javascript, decided to be my own replacement for Flash-based TypingMania Odyssey, which for some reason I can’t set it up properly at all.

Because I haven’t been following what happened in Javascript world recently, I did not know requestAnimationFrame() exists. I use setInterval(func, 20) as my main loop.

While I know how to use Vim to manipulate text file – a skill mostly required if you need to manage Unix/Linux server, I don’t know how to use vim efficiently.

Before, I know that <i> and <a> get me into insert mode, where arrow button works. <Esc> would take me back to command mode, where :w saves the file, :q quit the program and :q! quit without saving. Actually, I learnt to Vim because I didn’t know nano editor exist!

There’s a phrase: We are now in an era of abundant of processing power. While I certainly agree about this phrase – I believe it myself too – for some field no processing power is enough; namely graphics and video field.

I also work in such field, and I have got quite a powerful main rig (that I can afford). My main rig is Intel Core i7 2630QM Sandy Bridge (2.0GHz, Quad-code, mobile) with 16GB RAM running Windows 7. While might not sound as powerful as you might think (it still struggles on large After Effect composition, for example), it’s certainly more powerful than many new computer today.

Another field that screams for processing power is programming. While text editing (and yes, programming is just text editing) is not a burden on computer itself, compiling and testing sure do. Some program takes long time to compile even on fast processors. When testing, it’s very common to lunch virtual machines, which consumes quite a bit of RAM. Also, some IDE also takes a lot of RAM and processing power to provide better insight of code to programmer.