As THE OCTOBER GAME nears completion, it’s all debugging and cleanup. It can be both tedious and frustrating working on the same codebase for so long.
I’ve mentioned before the little side-projects I work on. But there’s another kind of practice called a Code Kata. The big idea is to solve the same problem repeatedly, each time extracting new lessons. It’s the same problem, but you try to come at it from a different angle. While the name is taken from the martial arts field, the concept is more like the deliberate practice of the musician. A beginner might practice scales, but more experienced performers would have well-worn pieces that they comes back to, both for private enjoyment and education.
There are a number of well-known code katas floating around but I think there’s value in having a personal set. I’ve spent the past few years learning Objective-C and the Cocoa framework specifically for use with the iOS operating system. I write iPhone and iPad apps even for my own private use. It’s my “home” base. Within that realm, there are a few subjects that I keep being drawn to:
Touch-controlled Shapes.
Particle Simulations.
Timers.
Down the road, I want to add some more like Machine Learning, Maze Generation and Image Processing but there are only so many hours in a day.
Also, I totally earned this:
