Playing Around: Games and scale

It's been way too long since I last posted, but many of you will realize that times have been, um, rather odd around here. And I've been pretty busy, both with Darkstar and with a bunch of other things. The Darkstar work has been, for the most part, working on the C client.

We contracted the original C client implementation, but when things on the server changed, we decided to update the client in-house. At first we thought that we could get an intern to do it (interns are great ways of getting cheap labor), but it turns out that our interns didn't really feel comfortable writing in C (kids these days). So I got the job, in part because as tech lead I wasn't doing anything that was critical, and in part because I was the one on the team that had done the most C programming (or would admit to it). We are, it turns out, a pretty Java-centric bunch.

It took some time to get back into the Zen of C (yes, you have to both allocate and free; you can just assert that some part of memory is in fact a particular kind of thing; don't even think about calling anything this. But there is a certain glacial beauty to C code when it is in final form (which, I will admit, takes a while). Unlike Java code, when I look at some C code I know exactly what that code will do when run. If it is running on a PDP-11. But then again, most computers are emulators of a PDP-11, so I still think I have a pretty good idea of what it does. It's nice, in it's own way. In doing this, I've also found some places that the C client interface needs to be updated. So there will be some additions (fortunately, no changes to existing interfaces) that should make the C client somewhat easier to use that will come out officially in the next release (which should be pretty soon). More on that when we get closer to the release, probably sometime around JavaOne.

My other major activity hasn't had much to do with Darkstar-- I've been teaching a class on privacy and technology. That has been more fun than anyone should be allowed to have with college students, and may be the subject of future posts....