
Announcing Bitwise - panic
https://github.com/pervognsen/bitwise
======
tomxor
> My goal with Bitwise is to show that these things can be done much more
> simply and quickly than people realize if we strongly favor simplicity over
> marginal gains in feature completeness or performance.

This is a refreshing way of looking at the world. One of my principles is to
always strive for simplicity when creating, but i've never given much thought
about how it applies to the fundamentals of existing creations or ideas when
learning.

In retrospect, I've learned many thing that I previously thought too complex
to understand. The complexities tend to dissolve when you realise they are
mostly just extra distractions emerging from the pressures of engineering the
thing... distractions that you probably find yourself inventing all over again
once you've assimilated the core idea.

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zenojevski
My favorite "toys", by far, are those happy, cheerful, friendly
implementations of famous problems, that make for a fun but educative learning
experience.

It may not be as huge in scope, but allow me to plug my own initiative:

[https://www.latenightsnack.io](https://www.latenightsnack.io)

I set out to replicate the joy of reading through code listings in old
magazines, and present seemingly-complicated problems in a simple and concise
way.

Some of the problems I will approach in the future are text and image
compression, compilers, chains, http servers, and so on.

I would love if you had a look!

~~~
chris_st
Pretty cool idea (though I'd personally tone down the intensity of the yellow
background, and use a higher contrast font color... whoever came up with the
"black is bad" meme will be really sorry when they get older and their vision
deteriorates!).

One story from "back in those days"... I worked at a small computer store in
1980/1981, and one of my fellow co-workers submitted a program to one of those
magazines, and they printed it!

Well, they _mis-printed_ it, and then mis-printed the correction he sent in
:-)

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zenojevski
That's how you patch software :) An open, if somewhat artisanal, process.

I have toned down the intensity of the yellow background, and increased text
contrast. I hope this improves!

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psykotic
Hi. I'm the guy behind Bitwise. Long-time HN user. If anyone has questions,
I'd be happy to answer them.

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agnivade
Thanks for this !

Question - Why did you choose C99 and not C11 as the standard ?

~~~
psykotic
MSVC only received C99 support starting in Visual Studio 2015 and even then
it's only partial (but enough for us). Actually, we'll probably use anonymous
structs and unions, which are technically a C11 feature, but have been
supported by all the major compilers for a long time before C11.

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newscracker
This sounds like a massive undertaking. The breadth and depth both seem huge.
Though I suspect that the prerequisites for the intended audience could
probably be a barrier, this will be helpful to thousands (if not millions) of
people around the world.

I will check it out. Wish you all the best!!!

~~~
sghiassy
+1 - Best of Luck

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dustfinger
Will all of the course video and discussions be available for download from
YouTube permanently? I am very interested in following along with my 10 year
old daughter, but we will need to move at a much slower pace. If we can still
access the course video a week or two late that would be ideal.

My daughter knows how to code in python, but not C or C++. I will have to
teach her that on the side which will slow us down considerably. She is really
motivated to learn though. We are both excited about your course.

~~~
psykotic
Yes, they'll be available permanently. I talk about this in the FAQ in the
repository, if you want to check it out.

I'm afraid this is going to be far beyond any 10 year old! I assume a pretty
high level of intellectual development and ability to learn abstract ideas
quickly, even if the formal prerequisites are minimal.

~~~
dustfinger
Understood. We are going to follow along anyway but at a much slower pace :-).
My daughter is highly motivated to learn. As long as she remains interested I
will do my best to lower the barrier of entry by teaching her all that I know
about C programming. I will work through all of the exercises with her and we
will spend as much time on them as we need to. We are not concerned about how
long it takes.

What you are doing with your time is a gift. Thanks!

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fulafel
The daily or bi-daily streaming and starting from scratch sounds like a
kindred idea to Casey Muratori's long running Handmade Hero gamedev streaming
project. Maybe not entirely by accident - it seems these guys have some common
professional history.

~~~
psykotic
Yeah, Casey's work was a big inspiration. Much of the structure is my attempt
at adapting Casey's format for my own goals.

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bogomipz
This sounds great. Kudos for undertaking this. Looking forward to following
along.

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pouta
I'll definitely follow this! Thanks for the contribution

