cygnus@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Marc Cygnus) (01/10/90)
oh JEEZ this is a great pseudosemester (you see, we at udel have besides two
Real Semesters (tm) also a winter session which lasts 5 weeks and was never
meant to be) because i'm taking it off and playing with all the projects i
haven't been able to work on all LAST semester!
i'm hacking a distributed volumetric renderer that knows about hypertexture
(as described in the most recent siggraph conference proceedings 89)... this
is fun. the reeeealy fun part came from making the daemons run on varying
architectures (sun3, sun4, uvax, sequent, ...). the next reeeealy fun part
will be making the daemon run on a LISPM!
there's something special about orchestrating operations on large numbers of
machines physically separated in space. the graphics, too... for me, there's
little that's more satisfying than seeing the result of hours of CPU work
suspended in front of you, existing nowhere but in your mind, perception,
and a small corner in core.
i wish courses were more hands-on oriented and more challenging. i don't
know how things are at other universities, but everything i know and know
_well_ (and for that matter, most of what I know period) inside of the CS
field i taught myself (*NOT* a boast of ANY sort!! this is a seriously sad
situation!). this is with the exception of my very first course and one
data-structures course. ack. i'm rambling, please don't flame me.
i can't get started blasting the education in CS i'm supposedly getting...
i won't stop and you'll get sick reading. anyway...
hacking is good. hacking relieves frustration and provides an incredible
sense of accomplishment when your goals are met, at which point you of
course decide to add features and it starts again! hacking is NOTNOTNOT
breaking-into-systems-and-exercising-malicious-schemes (get that into your
HEADS you damned ethics professors who rely on media portrayal of ``hackers''
and similar). hacking is producing for the sheer sake of it in itself and
to learn... and the freedom is wonderful.
*sigh* there's so much to do, so much to explore. i'm looking forward to
seeing the volume of this group increase. i've just seen too many computer
science majors graduate and 1) not know what a .login is, 2) not write
more than 2,000 lines of code outside of class, 3) etc...
-marcus-
ps: hey! if anyone is working with volumetric rendering, too (especially
distributed, and raytracing also), drop me a note! i'd love to share some
experiences.
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