I don't know what it is about programming, the highs are fucking high and the lows are humbling as fuck. Just last weekend I was celebrating after having finished the compiler, feeling quite good about it all. Especially after a couple of months or more that were spent on it. Then this morning it felt like the first time programming again. Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself. Then I remember how much it sucks not having a challenge at all. I'll take this any day of the week, I won't take it gracefully but I'll take it. It's both exciting and infuriating at the same time. Mostly I need to get my ego in check and be okay with sucking. You have to be willing to give up the good for the great. No one says how much it'll suck though. That's all I'm saying.
First game?
So it seems. I'm going on a journey. One that many awesome developers I know have walked. It's the Handmade hero's journey of course. Hence the frustration. In the series he does use C and is building the game on Windows but I've decided to add to the challenge by building it with Linux and Zig. It's been my new favorite language lately and I'd like to build more things with it. The Zig part has actually been quite good as it's so easy to interop with C. Link the library during the build step and that's it. The challenge is getting a window up and running in Linux. It's not any easier in Windows but at least there is documentation. I tried SDL3 but it's an abstraction over the window process. So I decided to use Gtk instead. So far it hasn't been easy. My biggest gripe is that it seems almost impossible to get the title bar to show up. I've had the same problem while using Raylib in the past too. It's most definitely a skill issue on my end.
It's strange but I'm quite nervous about streaming and working on this. It feels so out of left field, it almost feels like learning programming again. It feels quite scary to go outside the comfort of the browser publicly. Even though I did go on a short embedded journey and built a tiny browser itself. At the same time there is an energy about it. It feels like a step in the right direction. I might not get into programming games but I think I could learn a few things in the process. That's what I'm here for. Nervously looking forward to it.