Friday, March 20, 2009

What's been going on...

So, if anybody ever comes to my blog, he might be thinking, "What happened to NXTism?" Well, the truth is that I haven't been messing with my NXT for a long while: neither programming nor building. I know, this is sad. I just haven't really been in to NXT (especially the building aspect) for quite some time. Visiters to NXTism may have noticed that all I hardly ever posted about was NXText, a program I had been developing for the NXT. When I first got my NXT, which was only two years ago, I was NXT crazy! I was building new things, putting vids on Youtube, and programming my 'bots. I got my second NXT one year later, but didn't use it as much as I thought I would. I kinda fell into a slump, where whenever I tried (and still try) to build something, I just don't get any creativity. It stinks. If I would get some "creative juices" flowing, as they say, then I would still love to build with my NXTs. Even though I wasn't building anything, I was still programming the NXT with NXText. NXText is a program that runs on the brick without the need for any external sensors or motors. As of v2, it lets you open, delete, send, archive, and unarchive text files on the brick. This program is, honestly, pretty silly, because it runs on the NXT, which is nothing like a real computer. Basically, out of the NXT came my love for programming. So, I discovered that I loved to program; "Where to next?" I thought. I have always loved Macs and Apple, so I knew that if I were going to develop computer applications, I would want to do so on a Mac (sorry, but I kind of hate PCs *please don't take this personally; it's just my opinion). The current and probably best way to code for the Mac is by using Objective-C and Cocoa. So that is where I headed; I bought Kochan's Programming in Objective-C, and Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. Where am I today? Starting to develop my first little REAL applications! I am very excited. I am currently following Hillegass' book and am in chapter 6. I had been previously reading Kochan's book. So from NXT-G to NXC to Objective-C/Cocoa! Can you believe that? Only two years after getting my first NXT, I am now just starting to create applications on the Mac (very small, insignificant ones, that is. I'm only in the sixth chapter you know...). Pretty cool huh? And this may never had happened unless I had gotten my first NXT. Thank you Lego for creating such a great thing: it has helped me find my true passion for programming. So there ya' have it. Just some reflections on what's been goin' on in my life lately. NXTFreak