In message <884FF9F2-66BF-45A2-9C9E-6C7002247D98 / yahoo.co.uk>, Sharon Phillips writes:
>Yes, it works. But it's not the only way that works.
>Some people like to take things slowly and methodically, others like  
>to dive right in.

Yup.  I'm a "dive right in" person, myself.

>Sometimes you've got to get a taste for what's possible, for the  
>excitement of taking your ideas and turning them into reality.
>One of the best things about being young is that you don't know  
>what's impossible. That's why some of the most brilliant things are  
>made by young people - they didn't know it couldn't be done.

Oh, I've done that.  I learned C by reading the source code to hack.  No
one told me you couldn't do that.  I also used the source to figure out
how to understand the table in the binary containing all the monster
statistics, so I could make a modified version that was substantially
harder than regular hack.  (I didn't have a compiler, and the version
I was playing was the DOS version, and I only had UNIX source.)

>> It allows you to make a good game.  It takes a while, but, well,  
>> that's the way crafts are; it
>> takes a while.
>Did you ever have 'a while' when you were Joe's age?

I don't know how old Joe is.  When I was in my mid-teens, I read the
source code for hack, several times, pretty much cover to cover.  It
took a summer.  At the end of that summer, I still couldn't write C,
but I had a basic familiarity with the syntax.  When I was younger,
I did things like modify the code segments for Mac games (or, some
years earlier, CP/M games)... But in every case, I had to pick a simple
task to work through first.  It seems to be moderately inherent
to the task.

>Not trying to offend anyone here, just that (currently) there's over  
>ninety comments in this thread; half of them are Joe's, and the other  
>half are telling him how it's all too hard.

Not that it's too hard, just that he gives every sign of trying to find
a way to not do the hard stuff, and I don't think that'll work.

-s