A New Beginning - Again

Hi, I am tardis1 and, yes, I am a Whovian, but I am also many other things as well.

Yes, this is a new beginning for the TARDIS Server Project. I have made several of these over the years, but they all lacked something. Maybe this time will be different.

I grew up as a child during the Gemini and Apollo space flights. Like many others of that era, I wanted to be an astronaut. However, my poor vision ruined that by the time I was a teenager. Yet, there were still space things I could participate in. One of those was computers.

Computers made the space flights possible and as I began my career as an electrician, I learned that computers were coming to my discipline. So, I needed to learn.

In 1979, I held my first computer in my hands, a Timex Sinclair 1000 ( a BBC micro in the UK ). It had a whopping 2K of RAM. But, I could learn how to code. It had the best line as the first line in the manual: You cannot break this computer by using it. That was comforting.

I progressed through an Atari 600 and 800 before I was able to buy my first PC XT clone. I knew what PC stood far: personal computer. It belonged to a person. A person would write the software needed for their own needs. Yet, for many, that promise was broken soon. Large companies decided you, the person didn’t need to write software, you could just buy it; though it would never be yours.

I didn’t listen. After doing all I could with BASIC ( Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code ), I wanted programs to run like they did on the PC. I wanted to type myprogram and expect it to run. BASIC was interpreted, not compiled. I bought my first C compiler, PowerC. You can still find it on the Interwebs, but we have better ones around now.

I laid down much of my programming or coding for a long time during the 1990’s and early 2000’s. However, by the time of the COVID era, I realized I needed to be serious about my growth as a programmer, even if it was just for myself. I had continued to use code in my job, but mostly that was still the old BASIC from before. So, in 2020, with extra time, I began to learn more.

My goal is to be able to sit down and write what I want in the language I choose. I tried several and became proficient at a couple. I studied ReactJS for quite a while. I even built some useful projects. I also tried to learn Angular and Vue, but couldn’t get used to their structure. I spent more time studying C++ since there was a lot of bad news vibes about using C and I bought into it at the time.

Now, I have narrowed my languages to C and Java. Both of these fit my needs. C is just plain and simple. If I need classes, I can use Java. I am working on several projects in each.

• Wrangler – A C library for memory arenas, mostly.
• Adventure – My learning on a Java text adventure game
• Crow, an RPG game helper – A Java solo RPG game helper for a table top RPG called “Be Like a Crow” – by a UK author.
• Cards – A Java console card game engine.

There are others, but the top two are my focus for right now.

Now, for that current topic, AI. Yes, I make use of LLM’s, chatGPT mostly. I also use Gemini and DuckAI some. No, I do not “Vibe Code”. I use AI to help me figure out what I need to do, to organize my work, and sometimes to find out why my code doesn’t work. But, using AI to code costs money. I can ask questions all I want for free, but to get even one line of code written by AI costs money and, frankly, I still don’t trust the output. I don’t necessarily trust my output either, but if I keep trying, I will improve, and thus meet my goal.

I figure that much should be sufficient for now. I’ll write other things as I have time. Hopefully, I’ll post some code as this format ( Hugo ) seems to allow me to easily post code snippets. So long for now, and happy coding!