Programmer’s Diary

Over the past few weeks I’ve been a pretty lazy programmer! First I spent a few days camping in Norfolk without access to a computer or any decent books. Luckily I found a copy of The Recursive Universe by William Poundstone in one of Holt’s secondhand bookshops. It makes a pretty good browse while sitting on the riverbank with a picnic.

The last couple of weeks have been kind of hectic, but I’ve had the opportunity to look though a few of the programming games on Dennis Luehring’s list of programming games. I picked out CoreLife to experiment with. CoreLife is similar to Corewar, but played in 2 dimensions. Currently I’m attempting to write a replicator.

Speaking of Corewar, this month started off with some sad news. KOTH.org is to close at the end of May and will be missed by the everyone involved. KOTH has served the Corewar community for 15 years, providing a King of the Hill tournament, mailing list and IRC channel.

KOTH’s IRC channel has already moved to #COREWARS on irc.freenode.net and the KOTH webpage has been archive to ensure it won’t fall victim to bitrot. The fate of the hills and mailing list is still being discussed.

After spending a week on the Isle of Wight, I’ve finally returned to the civilized world. Thanks to Lawrence for recommending Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, although in the end I didn’t have enough time to finish reading it.

Programming Report

Most days I was up about an hour or so before everyone else, which proved to be my only chance to get any programming done. The only technology I had available was a Nintendo DS, with a R4 flash cartridge.

The R4 cartridge allows the DS to run downloaded homebrew software. DSOrganise is one of the best and includes an editor, IRC software and a simple web browser. Unfortunately, I never found a WiFi connection to use the Internet.

The DS turned out to be handy after all, since I downloaded the ANS 94 Forth Standard and eForth to the R4. I managed to implement a couple of dozen words in assembly over the week

First thing tomorrow I’ll be heading south to spend a week in the great outdoors. Although my laptop is staying at home, I’m planning to program something worthwhile with a handful of scrap paper and a few hand-written notes.

Since I didn’t have time to order a book about Forth, there’s still some space available in my rucksack. There’s a few on my bookshelf I haven’t read. Which should I take for inspiration and what should I leave at home to avoid the distraction?

• The Emperor’s New Mind, Roger Penrose
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
• Unsolved Problems in Number Theory, Richard K. Guy
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• my tiny life, Julian Dibbell
• Crypto, Steven Levy