What Did Coding Look Like in 1985?

Ahh the bittersweet feeling of programming from years ago:

http://blog.jgc.org/2013/04/how-i-coded-in-1985.html

Interesting glimpse into how programming things was back in 1985. Anybody that has ever written a little in assembler can probably bond with this.

Also, I like the screenshots of the paper notes. Syntax highlighting++. I'm a big fan of writing before coding. I think it helps a lot and back then you pretty much had to do it to ensure that you could keep track of everything that was going on.

Automating NES Games Programmatically

A former CMU PhD grad has released a paper on automating NES games through programming.

Video and links to the paper can be found at:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/

The idea and concept is pretty cool. Basically, the program works by manipulating RAM.

Using random features and running though a "set list" of functions, Mario is able to be controlled programmatically.

For more information on Tom, please check out this site found at:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/

Also, I didn't know about the bug in Mario that allows you to stop a Gomba from the bottom up as long as Mario is moving down it will work!

I feel the pain on the Karate Kid part...that game was a pain.

Happy learning!

Homegrown Talent

"There are the people who don’t have any experience but are just really smart, talented, and motivated. When you get those people right, they’re your ‘homegrown talent’, if you will. These people are your farm team. These people are, for the most part, the best people who will stay long term at your company. They’re the carriers of the culture. They grew up there. You took a chance on them. They’ve learned how to be in the business."

Taken from here:

http://firstround.com/article/How-Dave-Goldberg-of-SurveyMonkey-Built-a-Billion-Dollar-Business-and-Still-Gets-Home-By-5-30

I think this is a pretty cool article and wanted to share. I believe the above quote nails it on the head. When you give people a chance they will usually go above and beyond to impress you. These are the people that are thankful for the opportunity and will stand by your company or team for the long haul. Do right by them and they will do right by you. 

When building a core team, that is the type of person you are going to want to go after. 

Installing Adobe Source Code Pro Font for Sublime Text 2

This guide will help you get Adobe’s Source Code Pro font installed for use with Sublime Text 2. More information about this font can be found here.

First, you will need to grab a copy of the font. It’s available for free at:

https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro/downloads

Next, you will want to install the font onto your system.

For Mac users,

  Open Font Book application.

              Chose the + button under Font.

              Locate and navigate to the font you would like to install.

For Windows users,

        Locate and navigate to where the font is saved.

        Select all desired fonts in the directory. CTRL+SHIFT.

        Right-click and chose install.

Congratulations! You now have the Adobe Source Code Pro font installed on your system. The next step will be getting it to work within Sublime Text 2 for some coding goodness.

To change font in Sublime Text 2,

       Open up Sublime Text 2.

       Click on Preferences menu and choose: Settings-User.

  Add in the following lines to this file:         

"font_face": "Source Code Pro",

"font_size": 12

        Save file to make changes. 

Note: If you look in Preferences menu/Settings-Default you can find many other things that can be changed within Sublime Text 2. Try your own customizations to fit your needs.

There you have it! You have now installed Adobe Source Code Pro and you’re ready to bang out some killer code!