Programming: is it a means or an end? It was pretty simple for me to answer this question earlier, but now that I think of it, it's a bit more complex. Usually when a person compares means and ends they are judging whether ends justify means, visa versa, or whatever the case. This argument is not so complex, it is simply whether an activity can be seen a mean or an end. As simple as this question is, it has defined my actions to a very high degree for the past 8 years. Eight years ago, I was 13 years old and I decided my future. As if I haven't told this story before, I'd like to explain a bit about my past. Since I was old enough to understand my surroundings, my family has used computers. From the Commodore 64, Amiga, 386-25, 486-66, Pentium 90, Pentium Pro, right on up. At age 10, I started watching my dad program. He programmed a lot because when I was 10, he quit his job as manager of a convenience store and became self-employed programmer. He programmed in FoxPro DOS and moved right up the line. He currently programs in VB.NET. So growing up, I watched him. At age 13, I spent 10 hours working for him on a mall security incident project written in the brand new Visual Basic 3.0. It was pretty hard because I didn't understand things well enough, but my work was fruitful. I got things done, I learned a lot about how a project gets done, and my dad got his project done. He paid me the absurd salary of $10 per hour for it and he in turn charged the client $40 per hour for my work. But in the weeks to come, I decided that I would not program for money; programming for a living. My brother made a similar statement but meant something completely different: he was not going to program, period. I meant that I would program for reasons other than a living. That's right, not to make money, but for a dream of something better.
Another day, another pair of amazing truths learned. The first one is pretty simple: JF can be much better than it is. JF Final may be decent, but not even 1% as good as it could/ should/ would. I want to do a bunch of things, none of them will be easy.
Yesterday I actually posted the Making of JF, so here I am again today. Posting it did take courage and a bit of time, but it was worth it. When I say courage, what do I mean? From my short time as an Army Cadet, I learned that courage was not to be above fear, but to fear and to face what you fear. For example, one that the military teaches: if one fears death (common among humans), one can put themself in harms way (with the right amount of sanity, protection, and reason) and face their fear, you will be a couragous person. What usually goes through a person's mind is that since your survival rate is high, there's no reason to fear. What there is to fear is the probability. Your future life (friends, wife, kids, job, etc) has been reduced to a probability (one of my rants long explained without proper backing that the Cold War was as bad as WW2 because the fate of the Earth was reduced to a probability that two extremely ill-tempered people would not act rashly). But then if you die, you won't mind much, will you? More logically, a person might fear that something terrible will happen to him/her and that s/he will have to live with it. Anyway, the courage that I displayed yesterday was simple, yet profound. I fear that my life will be waste. I fear that my words will amount to nothing for me or for anyone else. I fear that I will change my mind in the future and that the words I speak are lies. So I try to keep on topics that are important whether I get them right or not, and I try to think them through. Much of what I say is subjective rather than objective. For example: "Speaking freely is a right that I hold very close to my revolver." That is a fairly subjective sentence. It does not say anything that a person could refute very easily. It says something about myself. While others may agree or disagree for themselves, it is true about me. If you find something that is not true in these rants, I would not be very shocked. I think as quickly as I can think and I write as quickly as I can type. Also, you must appreciate the millions of characters that I put in JF. The data file is in fact ~ 1.7 MB which means that I have about 0.3 million words. If all of them are true, I would be very surprised. If half of them are logical, I'd laugh. If one tenth are understandable by a person who doesn't know me, I'd probably call that person a genius.
So, I finally posted AS3DMD 4.17. See it up on the AS3DMD website. It supports xml, tar data files, and milkshape models. Bla bla bla. This is short because I haven't posted on JF for a month and I'm just trying to build enough courage to post again. The main problem is starting. Once I've stopped doing JF even one night, I can't start. Night after night I find anything else to do and it's not cool. Talking about not cool, I just looked at my bank account balance. There's not enough to pay my tuition even with my parent's generous contribution. This is to become a lesson in economics: I have two resources credit and debit. A person can pay for anything, but specifically any debts, rent, and phone with debit. A person can purchase items and pay for tuition with credit. By jumping through a few hoops, a person can get a cash advance on credit and put it in debit at a high rate of interest. My credit balance is $1,000. My debit balance is $2,400. I need to pay for $1,994 tuition, $340 rent, and $80 groceries. No problem, right? Wrong. Stupidly, I paid for rent and groceries with debit. That takes me down to $1980 in debit and $1,000 in credit. How do I pay my tuition? Uh oh! Cash advance from credit. I transferred $1,000 from credit to debit. Cash advance takes 7-10 days plus 3 days transit plus one day bank time. My tuition is due in 4 days. I have $0 in credit, $1980 in debit. I am screwed. But wait! Can I call one one of my smaller reserves? I only counted the $1,000 on my high limit card. Maybe I have a $500 limit card that can grant me $100 to pay tuition which I can pay back... Uh huh. Knowledge of credit cards and economics saved the day.
