16 May 2014

JavaDoc for methods

If you find it hard to write JavaDoc for your method, it’s a sign that you should rethink what your method does. Most likely your method is doing way too many things and you should break it into multiple methods.

7 May 2014

Life as a video game

Distance between “real life” and video games is shrinking. When I was a kid, my father worked 6 days a week, got a cash envelope every month which was later used to buy food and stuff for the family. You had to move physical things around to make things happen in the physical world.

Ever since I left college, I have never once gotten a cash envelope. When it’s pay day, a number on my internet banking site goes up... like getting a health pack in a video game. Every time I buy something, like being hit by monsters, that number goes down a bit. You often try to get things done with little loss to that number.

Most important goal of the game is to make sure that that number stays positive as you get things you want to get. And then there are all sorts of things you can do to artificially increase that number — for example you can get a loan which you’d pay back over years. There are also “danger zones” which suck your health points super rapidly (scams!) which you take great care to avoid.

It’s crazy how life changes right in front of our eyes and we barely notice it, if ever!