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Welcome to the forum BTW, forge is sure attracting a lot of programmers, must be the java.

Maybe its Java but I think it is just Magic. Computer programmers are attracted to Magic and I'm sure a million personal projects have been started and never finished because programmers think, "Hey this is fun, I can program this." Needless to say, programming Magic is very hard but rewarding.

It seems that there are few programmers adept at the graphics/user interface part of programming for some reason, almost regardless of which program it is.

True, most open source or free programs have crappy user interfaces. Because the "hard stuff" is making the program do whatever it is supposed to do, zip files, play Magic, surf the net, and the user interface is all just cute pictures that most programmers don't really use or like anyways. And truthfully the user interface tends to be more complicated than the rest of the program. It may take me 2,000 lines to make a decent free zip program with no user interface and it takes 3,000 or more lines to add a decent user interface on top of it.

One example, people have asked to me add sounds to MTG Forge. To me this seems crazy because I never want programs to be beeping at me or playing music, but I'm a programmer and programmers don't think like "regular people."

Personally I'm not all that great with user interfaces because they are really hard and writing a good user interface is very, very hard. Most programmers don't think that the user interface is very important but users have to use an user interface and they "see" the whole program through the interface.

I hope that explains things a little bit. Basically all programming is hard and user interface programming is very hard.

I think it's more interesting that Forge attracts such an older crowd.

I like doing GUI stuff... just not in Java.... In most of my VB projects I spend a fair amount of time twiddling with the GUI.

I think it's more interesting that Forge attracts such an older crowd.

Well maybe us old guys don't get out too much, lol. Maybe Magic attracts an older crowd? And certainly programming isn't for the faint of heart. Some days I see more errors than non-errors. It is a wonder that MTG Forge or any piece of software runs at all.

"An expert is somebody who has made a great many errors in a narrow field of study" and who can forget Edison, "Genius is 99% persperation and 1% inspiration".

xp:=∑err

Experience equals the sum of all your errors.

mtgrares wrote:Experience equals the sum of all your errors.

Experience is defined as the sum of all errors made.