Computers

Off-Topic
#1

So I realized that we have a few people in here who have a fairly high interest in the wonderful world of computing! So I thought we can have a little topic about it :slight_smile:

So setting up the ground rules for this topic: basically talk about anything computing and computers related here. Some examples may include, but are not limited to:

  • Computer Programming
  • News and tidbits in the computing world
  • Operating systems and other general applications
  • PC hardware master race enthusiasm
  • Computer Science in general

I hope this isnā€™t too broad a discussion topic but Iā€™d like to keep it in one place since this is an Off-Topic post, after all!

I guess to start, an introduction of my computing background. I took up Computer Science for my undergrad, and am currently pursuing a Masterā€™s degree in Computer Science. I also worked as a web application developer for a few years :wink: My current field of specialization is Networking & Internet and I like to think my interests spread through a pretty broad field. I can talk about Routing Protocols, Internet Architecture, Web Applications, or even Network Security.

I used to be really into theoretical computer science (algorithms and whatnot) but after a few more advanced classes (care of coursera.org, take a few if you have the time!), I realized that Iā€™m not very good at it x.x So I focused on something more aligned to my interests. I dislike probability and non-determinism, so that kind of cut Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and a lot of other fancy stuff that you hear about when you think of hardcore Computer Science. And Iā€™ve always loved the Internet and have spent waaaay too much time on it ever since I was a child (even more time on the Internet than on video games, I swear).

So, yeah, thatā€™s what Iā€™m all about! Iā€™m interested in hearing what the rest of you guys have to say about this topic, so feel free to continue the discussion in any direction you would like.

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Introduce Yourself!
#2

Iā€™ve always wanted to learn computer programming, but it seems like quite a commitment that I currently do not have time for. Lacking knowledge in programming side of things, I spend more time dealing with computers in the hardware department. Building gaming PCs, OC-ing, setting up cooling systems, as well as dealing with external peripherals; monitors, mice, mech keyboards & headphones. All of which as just things that Iā€™ve learnt from the internet and have zero qualifications in.

Not directly related to computers, but I am quite the aficionado when it comes to mechanical keyboards. Quite the expensive hobby that from time to time, I do regret picking up. Hopefully, one day I can call myself a proud owner of a Korean custom, but in the meantime I shall spam away on this Filco MJ-2.

I pray to GabeN every night for the day that I can enjoy all VNs in 1080p with jiggle PhysX.

f7eb3e86268b3ab1cab7cf48469efe69b9935d57.jpg3328Ɨ1872 360 KB

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#3

Been programming as a hobby for a long time (you can probably blame Warcraft III for that), and I started studying computer science three semesters ago. Still got a ways to go~

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#4

Hi Iā€™m Bowiie Iā€™m part of the mustard race. Iā€™m not Computer Science Iā€™m Computer Engineering but its close e-flipping-nough. So we didnā€™t own a computer until I was in high school so I had next to zero exposure other than a few ā€œclassesā€ we took in elementary school which consisted of we sat down at the computers and tried to entertain ourselves for a few hours with the rules being ā€œdonā€™t change the wallpapers.ā€ā€¦We changed the wallpapers it was amusing.

So round abouts my sophmore year we finally get this old jalopy of a computer running windows 98 which my mom had brought home because they were getting rid of them at work. So I preceded to screw around with said computer and see what it could do. My personal favorite at the time was playing in DOS because ā€œlol leet hakzor command line.ā€ I guess I expressed enough interest in it that it led to my dad buying a Dell my junior year and we finally go internetā€¦dial up YAY!

Armed with my graphics card-less 200 mb HDD rockin Dell PC and the internet I preceded to figure out a ton of how the computer worked. I wanted to learn more and eventually got really interested in the programming side of things and then found out my high school offered NO computer courses higher than keyboarding. My friend and I would proceed to push for at least basic programming courses and our last semester senior year they announced they would have their first programming course next yearā€¦typical.

I built my first PCā€¦donā€™t even remember whenā€¦it was a mess. The only instruction I had to go on was a buddies warning of ā€œcount your spacersā€. Amazing it workedā€¦also amazingly it would be hit by lightning 2 weeks later. I ended up going on to college and picking up some courses in Visual Basic, C, and C++. My programming side of things is pretty weak due to getting a really late start learning programming but I love dealing with hardware. Building PCs is muh passion you could say. So I donā€™t really have a company per se right now but around town Iā€™m sort of the on call ā€œcomputer guyā€ for several people who I do repairs and installation for. I would love to one day actually be able to turn that into a business, but Iā€™ve read so many small business horror stories that it has me scared of it.

TL;DR: Not a CS a CE like mess with hardware.

[quote=ā€œNocturne, post:2, topic:929ā€]
I pray to GabeN every night for the day that I can enjoy all VNs in 1080p with jiggle PhysX.
[/quote]Press P to bounce.

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#5

video game programmer here #holla

1 Like
#6

Good to see lots of variation over here~

Iā€™ve always wanted to try out a mechanical keyboard, but I never really felt the need to. Iā€™ve always preferred ergonomic keyboards. I remember in my old workplace, weā€™d have a few of these babies lying around:

bdec32cb0c3a3126ce1bac8200123feecb3a2c00.jpg800Ɨ600 71.8 KB

And everyone who would try it would be mindfucked by the key layout. But not me! It felt entirely natural~
Maybe if I see a mechanical ergonomic keyboard that isnā€™t totally expensive, Iā€™d go for it.

Ahhhh the good old days~ I was way behind everyone back then and only worked on a Windows 2000 Pro machine my whole high school life. And dial-up for the most part! Thatā€™s the best way to learn about computing, after all :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#7

[quote=ā€œNocturne, post:2, topic:929ā€]
I pray to GabeN every night for the day that I can enjoy all VNs in 1080p with jiggle PhysX.
[/quote]Vector-graphics with any resolution (4K displays and higher so we donā€™t need to keep doing ā€œHD updatesā€) would be great, but they would need to be done rightā€¦

[quote=ā€œBowiie, post:4, topic:929ā€]
I wanted to learn more and eventually got really interested in the programming side of things and then found out my high school offered NO computer courses higher than keyboarding.
[/quote]Same here. I went through a lot of different schools as well (due to moving a lot) and none of them offered programming courses. When we got Internet it was dial-up tooā€¦ (Iā€™ve since upgraded to tethering my phoneā€™s 3G connection, whee!! speed!!)

[quote=ā€œBowiie, post:4, topic:929ā€]
Amazing it workedā€¦also amazingly it would be hit by lightning 2 weeks later.
[/quote]Ouch! I lived in a lightning-prone area once, so whenever a storm came by Iā€™d unplug my equipment. It was terrible for productivity, lol.

My first game console was a NES. After playing Super Mario Bros (a lot) I became curious about how the machine worked. My dad mentioned something about computers, so I went over to the machine he had, which was this cheap-o Windows 95 rig. (Later it was ā€œupgradedā€ to ME. We somehow skipped 98.) I remember spending a bit of time in DOS but wasnā€™t sure how I could turn DOS commands into a video game. (We didnā€™t have the Internet, and I didnā€™t really understand anything then anyway.)

Later my mom got us a (better) home computer, Windows XP, and a solid Internet connection. I learned about ā€œGame Makerā€ through Google and looked it up. I did some small things with it, but later wanted to move into 3D games. To do so, I learned that you had to program them (rather than point and click), and thatā€™s when I started to really learn about computers. My ā€œchuunibyouā€ got in the way a little bit, but also kept the initial passion strong enough to keep pursuing programming.

Having started in some random variant of BASIC, I moved onto C++ and started interfacing with that BASIC language through there. After some time, I became more interested in the low levels and tried my hand at writing an OS. My experience in C was limited, and I had never written such low level code before, so that was a great experience. I had a primitive heap memory manager and virtual file system, running in 32-bits protected mode (the x86 starts in 16-bit ā€œreal modeā€ for those unfamiliar), and was able to load some files from the floppy through a very primitive shell interface. However, I never managed to get ā€œuser modeā€ working, and there was no proper GUI.

The forum software that I was using (as in ā€œvisitor to someone elseā€™s websiteā€) was irritating me at around the same time, so I tried my hand at writing forum software (in PHP and HTML). It took a few weeks but I was pleased with it. The software was never completed, but I was pleased with the resultsā€¦ (It was usable, at least. There were some features missing, Iā€™m sure, but it fixed a lot of the issues I had.) Seeing the forum software that Kazamatsuri.org uses makes me wish more sites would use it.

Most of the software that Iā€™ve programmed has typically been tools for a given situation, though Iā€™m working on two projects right now. (The projects are related to each other.) Iā€™ll announce what they are once theyā€™re far enough along.

As far as news goes, a lot of the stuff I get in my tech feed is political lately (e.g., ā€œCompany X is suing Company Y because phone Z,ā€ or ā€œThree-Letter-Agency is doing stuff!ā€). Something that caught my attention though is that Apple might be making a car. http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/13/wsj-tim-cook-approved-apple-electric-car-project-a-year-ago-hundreds-of-employees-working-on-it/ (This is somewhat older information now, and itā€™s not directly related to computers per seā€¦ still.)

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#8

Computer wise, my first approach was when dad took me to work, and I fiddled with ye olde Lotus 123 and Windows 3.1

Then, he got a Win95 where we mostly played with the OS, moving here and thereā€¦

I wasnā€™t until I was 13 that we got our own computer, Win98. I screwed the OS many times to the dismay of my older sisters, but was able to either fix it or find workarounds in order to recover their homeworks XD. That was my prime time when I knew about RPG maker, emulators, internet and Flash. And then, some C

Then again, in the college years, while I still programmed in C/C++, I deviated some by going into microcontroller/PLC programming. Assembly can be a nuisance if youā€™re used to high-level programming languages, since itā€™s commands arenā€™t very descriptive and you must know the behavior of the variables at a binary level on every line. That, and itā€™s hardware dependant

Right now Iā€™m learning Arduinos and about mobile app programming, but everything has been self-thaught

3 Likes
#9

For me my interests towards computers began in 2007, when I was in India taking a HTML class. I found the idea of creating websites to be really interesting and needless to say, I had a lot of fun creating all sorts of websites. It was in 2009 that I was introduced to C++ programming and man was my mind blown. I found the language to be quite fascinating and I was hooked into doing all sorts of programs that were assigned to me in my Computer class. It was a result of doing C++ that I decided that I want to major in Computer Science/be a Software Engineer.

However after I moved to the US in 2010, I wasnā€™t really in touch with Computer Science related stuff and when I took Java via AP Computer Science in 2011, it proved to be disastrous. A lot of the reasons why was because I wasnā€™t used to taking AP classes and I had a tough time with algorithms (still do) and problem solving skills. Luckily my confidence towards Computer Science and Java were restored when I took the Fundamentals of Programming class and thanks to the Alice3 Software, Java became more easier to learn and I understood a lot more about the different concepts than I did in 2011.

As for now, Iā€™m currently taking Fundamentals of Programming 2 where Iā€™m learning C++ again and Iā€™m taking Visual Basic .NET, which is an online course. I personally find Visual Basic to be more interesting than C++ at the moment because of the fact that most of the utilities we use in our desktop and computers kinda rely on Visual Basic (dialog boxes, button inputs etc). :smiley:

2 Likes
#10

Hereā€™s talking from my own experience as a Software Engineer: being good at algorithms takes the backseat once you get into real software development. A loooot of the work you do goes into making your code maintainable and reusable. Even if you do figure out how to make or implement an algorithm, in the end, youā€™ll have to figure out how to separate the functions of that algorithm in a smart way. Just some food for thought, if you plan to go into that industry :wink:

I donā€™t really like Visual Basic because I donā€™t like the structure of the languageā€¦ and since those features are more attuned towards the .NET platform, you can use those same utilities if you use C#. Thatā€™s just a biased comment from me, so check it out if you feel like it XD C# vs VisualBASIC is a long-running debate in the .NET industry

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#11

Yay, fellow computer geek here! Since you guys were talking about mechanical keyboards, Iā€™m typing this on a Ducky Shine 2 with blue LEDs and MX Blue switches. Also have a custom built desktop in need of a new GPU pumping a lot of pixels onto my dual monitors.

Next week Iā€™m going to be transferring universities and starting in on my Computer Science major.

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#12

Cherrybluesmasterrace. Nice keyboard, Iā€™ve had some problems with Duckyā€™s LEDs in the past so Iā€™ve sworn off backlit keyboards, but besides that very solid build. I found it difficult to find reliable vendors for PBT caps for backlit keyboards, so hope you have an okay time with that if youā€™re looking into it. Good luck with your ComSci major :slight_smile:

#13

Woo, dual monitors! Mine arenā€™t HD, but having two makes up for that. I should be able to add another monitor or two into the mix. I upgraded my GPU to a mid-range recently. (Technical reason: Supports a good set of GL extensions to develop against, like GL_ARB_sparse_texture and some of the Almost-Zero-Driver-Overhead subset. Real reason: Integrated card doesnā€™t cut it.)

The card Iā€™ve got is just a R9 270.

Plain rubber-switch keyboard here, unfortunately. It doesnā€™t bother me so much right now, but maybe I should just go get a mechanical keyboard.

Anyone here do any coding in C?

I did a public domain printf implementation a few weeks ago, mostly out of boredom. Itā€™s in single-header-library form (as stbā€™s stuff is). Hereā€™s an example on ideone: link. (Scroll to the bottom to see the example code.) Offers support for some FreeBSD kernel printf formatting specifiers (%D, %b), adds syslog-style %m support (give it a width-directive to use a specific errno), handles arrays ("%[3]f" for example), repeats ("%{0}c" will take the ā€˜%cā€™ part once, but not display it; ā€œ%{3}cā€ will replicate that same ā€˜%cā€™ part three times, ā€œ%{*}cā€ will work as expected ā€“ useful for printing out a variable number of tabs for indentation purposes), and some other minor things (can specify an arbitrary radix for a number, rather than just octal, decimal, or hexadecimal). Unfortunately %e and %g arenā€™t supported. (They will be accepted, but will only display a typical float, as per %f.) Also certain POSIX directives arenā€™t supported.

Hereā€™s the single-header-library form: ax_printf.h (ideone).

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#14

Thatā€™s pretty impressive stuff, yo. I should try out that printf when I get the time :smiley:

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#15

Yep, Cherry Blueā€™s FTW! I bought the MX Brown version originally but ended up selling it because browns felt too mushy. I also have a Corsair Vengance K90 my friend sold to me for super cheap with MX Reds. Not a fan of those at all either honestly.

I actually had an issue with the ā€˜xā€™ key on my keyboard where it quit registering in Windows after having the keyboard for a month or so. I emailed Ducky support directly and they told me to ship it off to some random guy in Californiaā€¦ Two months later and I hadnā€™t heard anything back, so I emailed Ducky support again, plus contacted the vendor I purchased the keyboard from, and apparently this random guy used to handle all US repairs, but the vendor now handled them. Fast forward another month or so and everyone finally got their shit together and sketchy guy overnighted my keyboard to me, only three or four months in total after I originally sent it in. At least itā€™s worked fine for the past year and a half or so, oh well~

And I donā€™t think Iā€™ll get into the keycap rolling business, if anything I may eventually buy an RGB backlit keyboard but Iā€™m in no rush as of yet.

Excuse the crappy picture, but this is my current setup for the next day before I move. Monoprice 27" 1440p IPS and Dell U2312HM 23" 1080p IPS monitor on its side there. If my card supported a third monitor and my desk had room for it, I also have a Dell 20" 1050p monitor that I used to use with the other Dell but alas Iā€™m too cheap to buy a new GPU. Currently I have an ATI HD4870 my friend gave me out of pity for still having an Nvidia 8800gt. :smiley:

You should definitely join the MKB masterrace! Either go all out with a Corsair RGB/Razer RGB keyboard (the latter I got to use the other day and it was amazing) or you can probably get by with an off-brand mechy for about half the price if you donā€™t want the extra frills.

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#16

That Razer RGB sounded pretty good. Havenā€™t looked up the Corsair one yet. Yeah, I may have to do thatā€¦ New processor and more RAM first though. :slight_smile:

Cool setup, btw. My setup is a hodgepodge of old stuff strewn together. Iā€™m interested in a FreeSync monitor next. (Though, my graphics card doesnā€™t actually support it yet.) For NVIDIA users, the equivalent would be G-Sync.

#17

If you really want an RGB keyboard, I would advise anyone to go with Corsair instead of Razer. Although, Razer has said that theyā€™ve created ā€œspecializedā€ switches, they have yet to create anything that can compete with cherry mx in terms of quality. Their greens are basically rebranded Kailh switches which are Chinese replicas of Cherry mx switches.

Either way there seems to be feed back on both keyboards saying that the LED spectrum are not up to satisfactory/advertised standard. The software drivers, to control the color scheme (mostly on corsairā€™s side) hasnā€™t had good responses either, but perhaps they have, or will be able to fix that in the future.

Personally, Iā€™ve tried the Corsair k65 red switches & the Razer BlackWidow blue switch. The former had a nice build, felt great for typing & gaming, although there wasnā€™t anything too exceptional about it. The only qualm I have about it was the extra features, sound etc on the keyboard, which for me felt unnecessary, but perhaps some people would like it. The BlackWidowā€™s blue switches is what made me trade it out after a few months of use. It felt tacky and didnā€™t provide me with the clicky sensation of cherry mx blues. Perhaps I would have a different impression if I tried the greens.

Anyway, whichever one you choose, I hope youā€™re happy with it.

#18

Ouch, usually a new processor means new motherboard as well. :confused: Not to mention RAM prices are ridiculous nowadays. Are you planning on splurging for DDR4 or sticking with DDR3? I canā€™t believe 16GB DDR3 is still over $100. I think I bought my 16GB set for my computer a couple months before prices started going crazy (that was in 2011) for $50.Still donā€™t use much over 6GB ever, and thatā€™s with my page file completely turned off on my SSD.

Freesync/Gsync sound cool, but personally I canā€™t see it taking off until the monitors donā€™t cost much more than standard monitors, and AMD/Nvidia work together on building a standardized version. I dunno about everyone else, but I think a lot of gamers will buy whatever brand card is the best at the time, and that changes every couple years or so Iā€™d say. So I donā€™t know how many gamers would want to be stuck with one brand of cards just because their monitor doesnā€™t support the otherā€™s refresh rate sync thingy.

Yep, I know the Razer switches are just Chinese clones, but honestly most people that are interested in high end keyboards will probably want to upgrade to something new and sell it later before it breaks. The only reason I mention the Razer Blackwidow Chroma is because I played with one the other day at Microsoftā€™s campus and the switches felt really nice to type on. Not quite as good as MX blues but better than browns. Plus the shift keys and other long keys still felt really clicky and stable. On my Ducky and a lot of other Cherry based keyboards Iā€™ve tried, the stabilizers in the longer keys make them feel really mushy. Plus the Corsair doesnā€™t come in blue switches, only brown/red/black which is a shame but I can see why theyā€™d exclude blues, as theyā€™re allegedly not very good for gaming.

And I could care less about the RGB ability. I would probably just keep them on blue the entire time because thatā€™s my favorite color, but it would be cool to vary the shade of blue on the keyboard in software. :3

I know this is slightly off topic, but does anyone else have high-end headphones in their computer setups? I have quite the fetish for STAX headphones myself, and their cheapest new system in the U.S. is $800. O.o

#19

The following might be a bit of ramblingā€¦ Apologies in advance.

To be honest the thing that caught my eye with the RGB board was that it offered a SDK. There are a few uses Iā€™d have for testing it out. One is, in a game Iā€™m writing, it would be neat to allow users to customize the LEDs from a menu for specific events. (If theyā€™ve got the board.) Also for tutorials, showing controlsā€¦ e.g., if you have a weapon assigned to ā€œslot seven,ā€ then the ā€˜7ā€™ key could be shown as lit up with a (color representing a) weapon. Or if the weapon is running out of ammo the color of the board could go from green to red, for that key. Itā€™s all gimmicky stuff, but I think itā€™s a neat extra for people with the board. I havenā€™t looked up any particularly relevant details regarding their SDK though. Corsair probably also has a SDK available that I could target.

In any case, if the Corsair one is considered better and itā€™s available for a close enough price, Iā€™d be inclined to go with that one.

DDR4 is a bit too expensive, and there werenā€™t that many mobos supporting it last I checked. Plus it would require somewhat more expensive Intel processors. Though if I had the funds Iā€™d just splurge on that eight-core (sixteen-thread) i7 and go with DDR4ā€¦ Anyhow, DDR3 is plenty fast enough for most of my uses, including gaming. Just need to make sure the processor and mobo support proper speeds this time around. (I neglected checking this last time and found that Iā€™m effectively limited to 1333MHz. Iā€™d like to bump up to around 2000~MHz. Iā€™ve noticed that small differences in speed are really effective for my typical workloads, so that should be useful and significantly reduce the memory bandwidth bottleneck.)

I was looking at 16GB as well. Right now, being at 4GB isnā€™t cutting it. There are some instances where I will be using nearly all of the available memory for certain computational tasks, but at this point even just 8GB would fix most of my out-of-memory issues.

[quote=ā€œmechgamer123, post:18, topic:929ā€]
Freesync/Gsync sound cool, but personally I canā€™t see it taking off until the monitors donā€™t cost much more than standard monitors, and AMD/Nvidia work together on building a standardized version.
[/quote]I agree. At the moment Iā€™m just selecting based on which vendor has provided GPU features I would make use of first. Right now AMD is leading in that direction as far as Iā€™m concerned. (Though the TITAN X is certainly a powerhouseā€¦) I would love to see cooperation between them (and Intel, because integrated GPUs) on accomplishing some type of practical standard between them. I havenā€™t looked at the DVI specific standard that was mentioned. It might turn out that in practice the FreeSync/GSync thing could be made to work with minimal hardware-hackeryā€¦ but Iā€™ve not yet looked into that.

Yes. This. :slight_smile:

I want high-end headphones. Does that count? xP

#20

Iā€™m actually wanting to get the Corsair RGB keyboard at some point, Iā€™m looking to write some funny gimmicky stuff for it too. One idea I think that would be nice is to have Conwayā€™s Game Of Life running on it constantly while just doing general typing. Would be interesting to see what patterns emerged.
Another I thought could be Lights Out.
Iā€™m very fond of making useless pretty pattern programs so I think Iā€™d have a lot of fun with one of these keyboards.

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