quote:
A novice asked the Master: "Here is a programmer that never designs, documents or tests his programs. Yet all who know him consider him one of the best programmers in the world. Why is this?"

The Master replied: "That programmer has mastered the Tao. He has gone beyond the need for design; he does not become angry when the system crashes, but accepts the universe without concern. He has gone beyond the need for documentation; he no longer cares if anyone else sees his code. He has gone beyond the need for testing; each of his programs are perfect within themselves, serene and elegant, their purpose self-evident. Truly, he has entered the mystery of Tao."

The Tao of Programming.

That''s my definition of being an ultimate programmer... Even though this is more of a parody, this is actually what I believe in

I think that the most ultimate test of programming is to make something that everyone says is impossible, like blowing up a computer using QBasic, (ever even tried?) or making Windows not crash every few minutes and then take another 5min to boot up (that''s my biggest problem).

Anyone wanna take a crack at the second? (I''d greatly appreciate it!) And if anyone figures out the first one, send me the code. (Heheh... Here Mr. CS-Teacher, here''s my assignment, why don''t you run it somewhere far away from me?)

Falden

Try making a playable game with a MAC.

You *can* burn a monitor. It can be done on HP48 calculators, and it *CAN* be done on modern PC... all you need is Assembly my friend
If you really wanna give it a try, you gotta look for the intteruptions that allow you to modify the monitor itself, more specifically the ray control. I don''t know if it can *blow up* a monitor, but it certainly can burn the screen ...

youpla :-P

You can really kill the LCD of an HP48 ? Damn, I need a virus scanner for this thing ! Is it also possible on a TI89 ? Controlling or destroyng the monitor, Has any virus exploited this yet ?


Tim

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glvelocity.gamedev.net
www.gamedev.net/hosted/glvelocity

The Ultimate challenge in programming...

Well, a few that have been said are already done:
i.e. an OS that never crashes or deadlocks: BeOS

Here is my ultimate challenges in programming:

Writing an Operating System that "learns" how you like your user interface, and it starts to adjust programs that are installed to your preferences automatically, and it doesn''t remove stuff that is necessary. (tricky, but not impossible).

Okay, now for the "ultimate ultimate" challenge:

Writing a full operating system, with every application you would ever need and it never crashes, with perfectly readable code. You must do this task alone, and without help of any kind (except manuals, books etc) in less than a lifetime of 100years.

Now that is hard

Regards,
Nekosion

I will go with the previous poster who sees the creation of a thinking entity as the ultimate coding challenge. Just think, one day you get stuck with a collision detection code and will turn to your computer saying "Hal, could you please teach me how to code this?" Hal answering "No problem Jerry this is how you do it." Complete explanation would then follow. I think that would be really cool having computers teach humans. No need for books, schools, etc. What do you think?

quote: Original post by Nekosion

The Ultimate challenge in programming...

Well, a few that have been said are already done:
i.e. an OS that never crashes or deadlocks: BeOS

Hehe... I''ve had more problems with BeOS than I''ve ever had with Win2K on my computer!

Anyways, I think the hardest task is getting started in a project you know nothing about. Like for me, I spend about 2 yrs after moving to windows floundering around trying to get the hang of DirectX with nothing to go on, couldn''t get the examples to compile, and all of that jazz, and dang, that was difficult. As far as learning something new or related, or applying existing skills and knowlege, that isn''t hard at all, it''s just extrapolating and making assumptions based on what you already know. Whereas if you have no point of reference (be it physics, AI theories, or even some good tutorials) the shear overwhelmingness of everything makes it impossible to proceed.

Wasteland: I haven''t had any trouble with BeOS, Windows 9x or NT (2K) on my computer, the only thing I have had trouble with was Linux, it just ran way too slowly. Like the cursor was at one side of the screen, I move the mouse, and it''s on the other (graphical mode). In console mode, it''s pretty cool though.

I would have to agree that programs that think would be hard to write... however a lot of programs would be hard to write, guess it''s all from your previous experiences in coding.

Regards,
Nekosion

ACTUALLY, you can destroy a computer from BASIC. Back in the stoneage when Tandy computers ruled the world, there was a hardware bug in a Tandy machine that allowed you to toast the motherboard from a program.

Of course, there was also the early NEC monitors that would toast themselves if you sent them a sync signal they couldn''t handle.

Tim