and you find a blog with 1.5 semi-coherent posts and a shitty sidescroller? :-)
I'm not criticizing the author or his work, I'm just saying that writing a recursive function that does p + kv recursively shouldn't take a lot of code. Do I need to end each comment with a smiley face to prevent it from being taken the wrong way?
I agree with you, it's not a very complicated thing. But that's the beauty of it - raytracers are simple but produce stunning images (it is a raytracer, though - it traces rays! Plus it does ambient + point lights, reflections, shadows... the kind of stuff raytracers do)
It doesn't take a lot of code, sure. But "a cross-platform game framework in 100,000 lines of C++" is not the current fad in HN ;)
I don't think it's a matter of adding a smiley at the end of each comment (although I love smileys, so I do that too :-)
I think it's more a matter of saying "Yes, good job on figuring out how to do p + kv recursively! Here are links to {papers|books|lectures|other code} that go further if you want to explore this topic more" rather than saying "Oh, you figured out how to do p + kv recursively, just like millions of other CS freshman. Good for you".
It's the little details that make online communities pleasant :)
- born in uruguay
- worked his way up to google
- learned BASIC at 5 (and made childhood drawings that included handwritten basic code)
- read First Blood at 9
- wrote first short story at 7
Meanwhile I go to grandparent poster's site and find... well. I think I sort of understand where the criticism is coming from.