Heroes are made by the path they choose, not the powers they are graced with.
Brodi Ashton
Welcome to Harlepengren! This blog is for creators and inventors that love to learn about technology and create new things. The blog will focus on coding, electronics, 3D modeling/art and related areas.
Why did I start this blog?
I started coding when I was in third grade with the goal of making an awesome game. The first language I learned was QBasic. I learned enough to make a few simple games, a state capitals game and a politics economy simulation based on the lemonade stand game (still an awesome game). You would buy campaign posters and buttons and the game would simulate an election. The economy was incredibly simple, the more you spent on advertising the better the chance of winning.
In 5th grade, I moved to C++. I was self-taught with the help of a few books along the way. My first book was called Flights of Fantasy. The book taught how to make a flight simulator. The next book was called Black Art of 3D Game Programming. I read the book so much, the binding fell apart. The third book that I loved was called Simple C++. This book was fantastic for learning object oriented programming. Amazingly, you can still get these books from Amazon, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There are much better ways to create games now (Flights of Fantasy recommends a resolution of 320×200 and explains how to write the assembler code necessary to access the VGA adapter).
Although I learned a lot about C++, I never succeeded in making my own game. I was missing many of the key fundamentals. I definitely didn’t have sufficient math at the time. I also didn’t have the Internet to look up anything or the benefit of a pre-made game engine like Unity or Unreal.
For various reasons, I did not end up in a coding profession (although a part of me wishes I had). However, it is still a hobby of mine, which maybe is even better than a profession. All the fun and none of the stress.
Fast forward, in 2011, I had my first child. To my delight, he took up an interest in coding and game making. However, I realized that as a father, my projects were no longer my own. Instead, I found myself as a contractor in his world.
My son had amazing ideas. I felt sad that I could not fully help him. His ideas were beyond my knowledge or capability. I also struggled with his project switching. We would start working on a project. I would begin researching and testing. I would get fully involved in the project, and he would move on to the next one. For him, he enjoyed the thrill of starting a new project and learning more than he enjoyed finishing something. To be honest, I am the exact same way. However, I wasn’t ready to switch yet. I would get frustrated with him. Over time, he would return back to the project again and would want to pick up where we left off. This required remembering where we were on the project and what we had previously learned. All of this leads to this blog.
The Purpose of this Blog
I have two objectives for this blog. First, this blog is for me. As I mentioned, my son rotates through projects. I spend time researching and learning how to do something. At some point he moves on to another project, but he will be back. Documenting my work will help me remember what we have learned and keep track of project resources instead of starting over.
Second, I hope that this blog is helpful to others others like me. Hopefully, you will be able to use this information to learn faster. This will also create a community of people facing similar challenges.
One hesitation in creating this, I feel like I don’t know everything. I worry about saying something wrong with respect to any of the topics. I don’t feel like I am an expert in any of the topics that I post about. However, I realize that this is ok. I don’t have to be an expert. I can share what I have learned. As I learn new things, I may have to publish a correction to what I shared before. In addition, this is not just me, but a community of people helping each other to learn.
Our journey is just beginning. Thank you for joining me on the journey.