Hello there, and welcome to my blog. I'm Brendan, a hobbyist programmer who likes to make useful things. I mainly work with Java, making desktop applications and android apps. However, I also use C#, Python, and make websites with HTML/CSS/JS.
I started coding about 6 years ago, a year after a friend of mine introduced me to a game called Minecraft (you've probably heard of it). I'd been playing this game during all of my spare time when I started to think about how the game worked. After a bit of research, I found it was programmed in a language called Java. So, I got myself a book called Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours. Little did I know that this would lead to a whole world of opportunity...
As this was my first language, a decision I don't regret at all, it took me about 6 months to mostly understand the content of the book and object oriented programming. The first program I wrote without the guidance of the book was a very strange calculator with a graphical user interface. It was able to do all of the 4 basic operations but each was on its own row so you couldn't easily carry out calculations on the result of another. Regardless, I was very happy with it and was eager to experiment more.
At the point, I decided that I would try and make a simple game. In hindsight, I probably should've practised a bit more with normal desktop applications for a bit, but oh well. From further research, I found out that Minecraft was made using a library called LWJGL. I thought it wouldn't be too difficult, but I was mistaken. From texture coordinates to vertex buffers, I couldn't make any sense of it. Fortunately, thanks to this series of videos, I was able to put something together. One of my teachers also helped me to make a collision system. With that, I had my first "game".
From here, I made a few more games including defending yourself against an onslaught of pixelated mummies and a geometry dash clone creatively named "Jumpy Square".
It was at this point that I started to branch out into other areas, most notably app development. As I already knew Java, I focused on Android. My first app was a clone of the Human Benchmark reaction time test which showed the user a red screen and required them to tap when it changed to green. It would then time how long this took and display the result to the user. After that, I created the companion app which is currently in the play store and all of the other projects listed on my site. One of my favourites is Infusio as it is a note to where it all started in Minecraft. Expect a post on how that mod started and the development process.
This leads me on to the purpose of this blog. I love to explore new technologies, platforms, and languages and would love to share my discoveries with you. I'm also planning to post articles on a few smaller projects that never made into full programs but are still interesting concepts.
Hopefully, my story was interesting and inspired you to work out how something you love works. Thank you for reading my first post.