At 8/7/06 07:53 PM, liljim wrote:
I'm guessing that this is in reference to what's written in the Literature page, in particularly, this part:
Almost entirely, yes. :-)
Whilst this is true in certain respects, you have got to keep several things in mind:
1. I started looking at the code on the site over a year after Ross had left. The development of the Internet and software used on it can progress in leaps and bounds in that short amount of time.
Oh, I believe it. I had always assumed it was much less of a time-leap. But I also figured it had to do with the fact that Ross had to worry much less about how many users were accessing all these things. Database strain, and the like.
Some of the changes that I made to the site code back in 2002 and onward were complete re-writes (which took time), but some of the most important parts of those re-writes were adding keys to database fields that had not been previously assigned. These changes were relatively quick, but very cost effective when it came to saving work that the database had to do.
I figured all that. But I'm not a programmer, and not really 'in the know' about the inner workings around here. I'm just someone who's relatively intelligent, and able to moderate effectively.
2. Newgrounds' popularity increased exponentially (against all odds, with respect to keeping the site online due to advertising revenue slumps) shortly after Ross' initial departure from the site. Code that would have otherwise have worked perfectly on the site at the time he was working there suddenly became an issue. This is something you can only learn after reading error logs and what not, which he'd never previously have seen when he'd been on the site.
Right, I knew about that.
3. Ross was my inspiration for exploring PHP/Perl and other programming and scripting languages, after having seen what he'd done with Newgrounds. I owe whatever I have learned in those respects as a result of his work, way back when. He and I always had a decent level of e-mail correspondence back then, too.
I see.
4. Sometimes, it takes a fresh pair of eyes to look over code and realise when things could be done more efficiently. The same that could have been said of the code that was initially written and which I started looking at in 2002, and have been working on from there on in to the current day, can be said of the code I've written in the past few years of working for Newgrounds.
I believe it. I know there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I've seen the way people do things with programming, despite having a very limited knowledge of the field, and I know that it's quite common for someone to say something like "Hmm, I've never seen it done that way, but I guess it works."
When I first started with the site, I had plenty of time to write new scripts, re-write old scripts and 'new' scripts. I don't have that luxury today, because there's so much to maintain and I deal with my fair share of correspondence from users.
The price of popularity, I guess.
I'm aware that there are problems with the code that runs on the site today and Ross has already identified a lot of areas of the site that could be made more efficient, that I would never have spotted. Whether or not that's down to him looking at the code again with fresh eyes, or because he's a lot more qualified, in more programming languages than I am is irrelevant - he's spotting things that I would have missed. In other words, the pendulum swings both ways, back with how things were with his code then, and how things are with mine now.
That makes me happy to hear.
And now I want to make sure that I'm not gotten wrong about my comments (although looking back I see how they might not have been taken the right way). I basically just assumed that you guys would be working together closely on whatever coding was done, and that since you were already into the maintenance end of the site's coding, Ross would be doing what his original post stated he'd be here for: helping to implement a buncha new features.
It's not to call Ross a sloppy programmer, or you unfit for anything but optimization, just an educated guess on how things will work based on how they have previously and currently suggested methods.
People forget or are unaware that he's responsible for doing a lot more than he's credited for.
It's easier to give credit where it's due when you guys let us know the location. ;-)
C'est la vie. :)
Indeed.
All of us work incredibly hard and love doing what we're doing. I see posts now and then that seem to indicate that Tom might be a missing link somewhere, who doesn't really do a great deal. Haha - how wrong can those people be? He's around the site all the time, updating collections, making suggestions, implementing rough designs for things that will later be dealt with by the hands of the artists and then coders, etc, etc. And that's ON TOP of coding up ANOTHER console game AND dealing with more e-mails and private messages than the average human being gets AND dealing with a ton of clerical work in the office. Damnit, that man is a machine.
Ain't that the truth. Just from the meetup listening to some of the things Tom and crew would do. Seeing how they're there on weekends, even, just to work on things and do whatever around the office. I think the most interesting things I heard was Tom saying that he'd sometimes wake up early in the morning and get to the office just because he had an idea or couldn't sleep or whatever and work on Newgrounds. It was clear why this website keeps growing, expanding, and becoming more and more cool.
