System iNetwork

March 18, 2007

Stupid RPG tricks and sourdough programming starter

Remember learning to program before the Internet? How did we do it? How did we learning anything? Back in the good ol' days, programming tricks and techniques were passed around from one programmer to another like sourdough starter was passed from gold prospector to gold prospector in the 1800s.

Early on for me, in the middle of a cornfield in Indiana learning RPG back in the late 70's and early 80's, I learned first not from magazines or COMMON, but rather from a few local programmers. I remember having lunch one day with a programmer friend of mine. We had hired the company he worked for to help us out and he was the guy assigned to our account. Long story short, he and his company weren't much help. But he did teach me a thing or two.

For a couple of years, before I learned that there were actually midrange programming educational resources avaiable, he and his crappy code were my main source of programming sourdough starter. I recall the thrill I got when I learned from reading his code how to set the value of sequential indicators with a single line of code. A single line of code! Remember this oldie-but-goodie:

'0010100' MOVEA *IN,55

Geeze, Louise. I thought the guy was a genius. I used the technique everywhere. Of course, the technique moved my already near-awful code a few squares closer to pure awful. But, hey, at least I was making it awful with very few lines of code!

The other nearly famous RPG trick I learned from reading my buddy's code was the infamous 10000.01 date multiplication trick. Of course, the trick wasn't commented and there weren't any meaningful field names used; it wasn't until about the 100th viewing that it dawned on me what was happening. With just one line of code, and no data structures or other nonsense, you could easily convert a MMDDYY numeric date into YYMMDD. Again, genius! It would be several years, and require another programming platform and language before the date data type light came on for me. But until it did, I thought 10000.01 was date manipulation nirvana.

How about you? What's your favorite stupid RPG trick? And who provided your programming sourdough starter?

rp

Posted by rpence at March 18, 2007 11:03 PM