Lev's developer blog

When I first discovered Linux and the world of Free Software, I was already programming in the Microsoft ecosystem for several years, both as a hobby, and for a living.

I thought switching to writing Linux programs was just a matter of learning a new API.

I was wrong! Very wrong!

I couldn’t find my way through the myriad of tools, build systems, IDEs and editors, frameworks and libraries.

I needed to change my thinking, and get things in order. Luckily, I found an excellent book that helped me do just that: “Beginning Linux Programming” from Wrox.

Chapter by chapter this book guided me from using the terminal, all the way up to building desktop GUI programs like I was used to on Windows.

But you can’t learn programming just by reading a book. You have to use what you learn immediately and build something, or you will not retain any knowledge!

And that is exactly what I did: as soon as I got far enough to begin compiling C programs, I started building “Terminal Bomber”.

In hindsight, the name sounds like a malware. But it is not. It’s just a game. It is a clone of “Mine sweeper” for the terminal, using ncurses library.

I got as far as making it playable, adding high scores and help screens. I even managed to use Autotools for the build system.

And then I lost interest and let it rot. With the TODO file still full of items.

I never even got to packaging it for distribution, even though I planned from the start to release it under GPL v3.

But now, in preparation for a series of posts about quickly and easily setting up HTTP server for IPC, I finally opened a Github account.

And to fill it with something, I decided to put up a repository for this forgotten project.

So here we go: https://github.com/lvmtime/term_bomber

Terminal Bomber finally sees the light of day!

“Release early release often” is a known FOSS mantra. This release is kind of late for me personally, but early in the apps life cycle.

Will anything become of this code? I don’t know. It would be great if someone at least runs it.

Sadly, this is currently the only project I published that is not built for a dead OS.

Just putting it out there… 😛