Interview with Jimmy Mårdell
Posted by Michael on 16 November 2005, 15:02 GMT
For the second in our series of interviews with famous programmers, I interviewed Jimmy Mårdell. Jimmy has written a wide range of programs but most of you probably know him for his popular games Sqrxz and ZTetris. He is an outstanding programmer who won the 2003 Google CodeJam. Read on for the interview.
Interview with Jimmy Mårdell |
Michael | How old are you currently and what education have you had? |
Jimmy | I'm 27. I've been studying computer science four years at Umeå University. However, I haven't graduated yet. I got a job offer during my studies, and decided I wanted to do something else instead for a while. That was more than 2 years ago now. |
Michael | You won the 2003 Google Code Jam which is very impressive. Have you done any other programming since you left the TI community? |
Jimmy | Well, I program every day at work! Besides that, I've mostly been involved in algorithm programming competition, such as IOI, ACM, TopCoder and Google Code Jam. They are great fun, and also improve your programming technique
quite a bit. I believe quite a lot of people in the software industry underestimate algorithm and programming technique, and focus too much on software development processes. I've also done some game programming on the Nintendo Game Boy. During my TI-time, I coded the Game Boy Color (partly in cooperation with Icarus Production and then moved on to the Game Boy Advance when it came out. I spent a year or so during my university time working on a commercial GBA game, Fila Decathlon which was developed by myself (all programming) and another guy who did the game design and all graphics. That was great fun, but I don't think I will do any commercial game developing in the future.
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Michael | What else have you been doing in general? Jobs? Hobbies? Travelling? |
Jimmy | Obviously programming is my main hobby...and in particular problem solving and similar stuff requiring analytical thinking.
I also play chess quite a lot at tournament level (my FIDE rating is 2128).
I work at a Swedish startup company, Elucidon. I won't bore you with
what we do, but it's really cool stuff so feel free to visit our homepage for more info. I'm mainly involved with backend stuff, databases and performance optimization.
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Michael | Do you think the community has changed since you were active? If so, how and has it gotten better or worse? |
Jimmy | I'm not that up to date with what happens in the TI community. I check ticalc.org once a month or so, but that's about it. Maybe I'm blind, but the
community seems a bit lacking. I mean, people do all kinds of cool TI games obviously, but I don't see the community.
I see people write a lot in the forums, but I never read those (on
any site, not just ticalc.org). Lets face it; the people who have
anything interesting to say don't say them in forums because they're
just full of ****sh**. That's why you have news items, and editorials.
Speaking of which, why isn't there a regular editorial on ticalc.org,
or have I just missed it? I don't think the newsletter (which I receive)
is a good substitute for that.
If the forums are the community today, then I'd say it's a lot worse.
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Michael | What's the best thing you remember about the TI community? Worst thing? |
Jimmy | Without a doubt the best thing about the community is the very reason it exist (I think): the birth of ZShell. And then it continued with Fargo etc. The whole "underground" culture was just plain cool. Also there weren't so many people doing asm programming in those days. A community that is too big isn't a real community imho.
When TI started to support assembly programming, it took a bit fun out of it actually. I don't know, maybe that was the start of the decline of the community.
I also suspect the community has also grown a lot. There are a lot more who develop programs today. I suspect the whole TI-"community" will (if it hasn't already) grow towards how things are done for Pocket-PCs (though hopefully most stuff will be free!)
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Michael | Is there one of your programs that you like best? Why? |
Jimmy | Personally I liked Boulderdash most, because it used the exact same algorithms as the original version on the C64 (thanks to some people who reverse engineered it). |
Michael | Have you ever met any other community members in real life? |
Jimmy | Yes, I've met fellow Icarus Production coders Andreas Ess and Matthew Shepcar at the ECTS (a gaming convention) in London the year 2000: (from left, Matthew Shepcar, Johannes Rajala [gfx guy, but did some TI coding also], Andreas Ess and myself). Most of us still keep in touch.
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Michael | Do you have any advice for programmers who are just getting started? |
Jimmy | Have fun when programming. Don't program because you think you must. Find enjoyment in the actual programming, not just in the finished
program or game. |
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Jimmy raised a very good point about the lack of a regular editorial on ticalc.org. This is because no one ever submits any. If you have a quality editorial, feel free to e-mail it to news@ticalc.org.
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The comments below are written by ticalc.org visitors. Their views are not necessarily those of ticalc.org, and ticalc.org takes no responsibility for their content.
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Re: Interview with Jimmy Mårdell
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slimey_limey
(Web Page)
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> Have fun when programming. Don't program because you think you must. Find enjoyment in the actual programming, not just in the finished program or game.
I agree. Don't lose hope when you've been degubbing for the past eight hours; just come back to it tomorrow or next week. Sometimes it helps to print out a section of code that's been giving you the most trouble.
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Reply to this comment
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16 November 2005, 15:27 GMT
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Re: Interview with Jimmy Mårdell
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Sebastian Schmied
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"[...] the people who have anything interesting to say don't say them in forums because they're just full of ****sh**."
What could the "****sh**" mean?
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16 November 2005, 15:37 GMT
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Re: Interview with Jimmy Mårdell
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Zeraz
(Web Page)
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But why is the header 'Interview with Joe Wingbermuehle'?
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16 November 2005, 17:19 GMT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How do you type "å"?
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Jason Malinowski
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To move blocks of text: Shift-V will insert visual line mode, and then hit up/down to select a block of text, then hit d. Move where you want to put that block, and then hit p or shift-P (p puts it after the current line, shift-P) before.
And going to grandparent post:
> Then I realized I couldn't use HOME or END, and you couldn't delete the new line character at the end of a line.
It works fine in my gvim installation here. Put the following line:
set backspace=indent,eol,start
in your _vimrc/.vimrc. In windows, put this in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>
For example, my file is C:\Documents and Settings\Jason\_vimrc. Note this Windows only. Linux will of course have it as .vimrc in your home directory.
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19 November 2005, 16:24 GMT
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