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Adler Horst |
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When I started learning computers (DOS/WS/123/dBase 4), I loved exploring computers so much. I used to do a lot of weird stuff (that is what my teacher, Gokulakannan, thought!). We had a princely configuration -- 80286, 4 MB RAM, 40MB Hard disk, a VGA monitor -- what else can one expect at that time, eh? Click here to see a timeline page that I often update. Ok, coming to my interests here.... I am interested in Systems programming. I love doing anything that is under the hood (Don't take me wrong!), like the base kernel, or a driver, or optimizing some critical ISR et al. I had written drivers for DOS/Windows 3.1/9x/Me/NT/2K and also for an exotic RTOS, OS9. My next project is to write a driver for Windows CE 2.x/3.x. I have interests in nearly all the fields of CS. I like programming games and high performance (?!) graphics engines (at least to me!). I highly recommend starting with Action Arcade Adventure Set by Diana Gruber. It has quite an amount of information on side scrollers. That will make a good introduction book to Games programming. Then, move on to Zen of Graphics programming by Michael Abrash. A classic. You will not find so much in-the-field information on practical 3D programming anywhere else. He is an optimization guru, and so his code makes for fine reading. Visit this page for more game programming books - http://www.fastgraph.com/books/games.html. I have 3 or 4 more books on 3D games programming, but don't remember the name of the authors now! I will update this page soon with those names ! Click here to read an interview with John Romero (one of the co-founders of ID and the creator of the ever-played game, DAVE), in which he pretty much traces the history behind the Game gurus at ID. Another field that hold my interest is Network security. I love gathering all the info there is, about this subject, but, haven't tried any serious things yet. I thought of practicing this once on corporate networks, but decided against it. Subscribe to [email protected], [email protected] and I assure you, your INBOX will be always full and you will be stuffed with more than enough info on all the vulnerabilities out there. Compiler design - Lately, I am getting very much interested in this. I didn't go past the first 200 pages of the big dragon book (Aho Ullman), when I had it for a paper in my final year. But, now, I am drawn more towards it, but still I am not able to get past the first 200 pages. Gosh! If you are also interested in Formal syntax and YACC (or COCO/R), don't worry, you are not alone! My all time favorite, right from the day one I touched the computers, is Operating Systems. The mundane-and-plain-character-world of DOS, highly-cryptic Unix, always-crashing Windows, highly-impressive OS/2, Linux all these fascinated me. I'd love to work on more different OSs like Solaris, NetBSD (supposedly UNBREAKABLE OS), BE OS, Embedded Linux, QNX and the other embedded systems. Especially, I like the scheduling algorithms, multiprocessing and memory management. I started writing a OS which could run existing NT apps with out any modification, but had to drop that. I am a great follower of Component based software development; my early days spent tinkering with COM and now with a proprietary plug-n-play (?!) component architecture, built in-house. I am interested in Reverse engineering. In other terms, I love to see how applications are written in the actual world. Classic references for this, in the real world, are from Andrew Schulman. His books, Undocumented DOS, Undocumented Windows, Unauthorized Windows 95 et al shows you, with some neat tricks, how to do this! Also, If u get any books from Matt pietrik, just grab them. All of them are priceless gems ! Latest addition to it is the book, Undocumented Windows NT, written by 3 quite smart people from Pune, India. I haven't read that book yet, but, glimpses of the contents and several chapters prove to me beyond doubt that it is great book. I also collect cracks, have written some of them. If you are serious about it, grab a copy of SoftICE/W. Also, get Ralf Browns interrupt listings. Another field that is of interest to me is Viruses. Once I did some work on this field, but had to stop, because once I goofed up while debugging, and my HDD got corrupted. So, I now confine myself to collecting them. I have a sizable amount, but, not as big compared to the hobbyists out there. I have got many rare ones, though! If you are interested, send me your logs. Perhaps we could trade some! |