Nerd Crack

The geek bug bit hard this week, which explains the lack of posting; I've been funneling my spare time into filling the holes (ok, gaping chasms) in my nerd resume. One of the problems working for a large IT company with tendrils snaking into pretty much every corner of the software industry is that we have our own (markedly inferior) tools for the web stuff I do on a daily basis, instead of using the industry standards. So I've got to stay current with the tools on my own time, on my own projects. Motivation is always a serious problem, as is the growing alphabet soup of languages and technologies employers seem to expect web developers to have. The average job posting on Craigslist reads something like:

Proficient in HTML, DHTML, XHTML, CSS, CMS, PHP, MySQL, Ajax, ActionScript, ASP...

... and on and on. Of course, there's simply no way for anyone to be an expert on everything on the list, so the key is to learn the big ones top to bottom and be able to claim passing familiarity with the rest. To that end I've spent hours this week mucking around with Flash animations and web page creation, and in the process rediscovered two things I used to love:

1. Bending the computer to my will. Nobody gets started in the computer science field saying, "I want to write printer drivers." But every kid who's ever liked video games kicks around the idea of making their own, and the friendless kids like me end up spending countless hours in their basements learning bit by bit, with every triumph a small rush as you get the seemingly inscrutable machine to do what you want. (The those kids they go off to college to major in comp sci only to learn that the games industry is a meatgrinder and that it's better and safer to take a job writing boring code at a big company, which eventually gets so dull that they change jobs and quit writing code entirely, but that's another story.)

So it'd been a good long while since I'd really pushed myself to create something. Part of the problem is that games these days are created over the course of years by teams of hundreds of people, built on mind-bending technology that costs into the five figures. No sane kid (and definitely no reasonable adult) is going to look at BioShock and go, "Hey! With a few weeks of study and a home computer, I could do that!" When I was a kid (insert sepia-toned montage and tinkly piano music here), the primitive graphics and structure of adventure games or stuff like Legend of Zelda didn't seem too far out of reach, which is what chained me to that keyboard all those Saturdays. I'd be worried that the steep learning curve would scare the next generation of programmers away, but most of them have probably already discovered what I finally found in the last few weeks: Flash. There's a market again for simple, innovative games, and a tool for creating those games that doesn't require a graduate degree and years of experience to use. I haven't made any games yet, but I keep seeing animation effects on web pages and scurrying to the computer to see if I can duplicate it. It's immensely satisfying, and I can justify it to the wife by saying I'm learning important stuff that will help if I get laid off.

2. Buying computer books. God, I love computer books. The huge, thick manuals that delve into minute technical details. Each one contains the obligatory CD inside the back cover, the index that runs over 60 pages, and the promise that reading it will confer vast knowledge. It'd been years since I grabbed a stack of manuals, commandeered a book store chair, and spent the next 45 minutes deciding which ones were worth purchasing and which ones made empty promises on the hyperbolic back covers. Now I've got a whole new set of tools to learn, which obviously means I have a whole new set of books to buy. I've been prolonging the experience as much as I can, buying one new book every few weeks, but always jonesing for that next hit from the bookstore. I feel like a kid again.

One other (unwelcome) way in which I feel like a kid again: when I was first learning to program, all the fancy compilers cost over $100, which was well out of my price range and required me to use old stuff that didn't necessarily work with the books I was buying, or trial versions of the good stuff that held back important features. I figured being employed would allow me to buy all the new tools, but I quickly learned that Adobe wants one thousand dollars for the new versions of Flash and Dreamweaver, which is highway robbery. Adobe, no wonder everyone pirates your shit.