Madeup Status Report #4
Fixlog My goal for reporting my updates in two-week chunks was blown to smithereens by a week-long summer camp for middle schoolers that I put on last week. So, let me summarize what’s been going on these past few weeks topically instead of chronologically. Storage The part of releasing Madeup to the public that has scared me the […]
Madeup Status Report #3
These past two weeks were host to a considerable number of bug fixes and model generation tweaks. Dowels can be rounded and their thickness can be changed. Better geometry is generated for surfaces of revolution and extrusion. And the user interface feels much more coherent and better remembers users’ settings. Read below for a daily breakdown […]
Madeup Status Report #2
Madeup saw a major behind-the-scenes shift this fortnight: I switched to a handwritten lexer and parser! I can honestly say my life has improved significantly since the change. Parser generators are great, but I’m not sure decoupling a grammar specification from the code that recognizes utterances conforming to that grammar is really what we want to […]
Madeup Status Report #1
The reason I became a teacher is so that I can do 1000 things in a day. I design homeworks; write grading unit tests; plan and deliver lectures; read up on relevant news and research; review academic papers; read books on things I don’t know enough about; compose haiku; serve on various university committees; oversee independent studies; meet […]
Madeup Briefing
Introduction Madeup is a language for making things up–literally. It is a platform for thinking about shapes in an imperative, algorithmic way. Its speakers trace out an object’s skeleton or cross section and then use a Madeup command to generate a solid 3D model that can be printed on a 3D printer. Here we briefly describe the language […]
Madeup Circulating
Last week I started a Kickstarter campaign to support summer development for Madeup. The support I’ve found amongst my former students and coworkers has been very encouraging. I’m not surprised, however, because they are good people. What’s been more surprising is the support of random strangers. A Google search of madeup kickstarter reveals the following: […]
The Revolution Was Madeup
Madeup now supports surfaces of revolution. Trace out a radially-symmetric cross-section of an object, then spin it around the object’s central axis some number of degrees using the revolve command to form a solid. The variable nsides determines how many intermediate stops are made as the cross-section is spun. I offer a few examples of the revolve […]
Randomness in Madeup
About 30% into writing tests for a piece of code, my energy deflates. When I consider how many more tests I have to write to thoroughly test my code, I am overwhelmed. The worst part about testing is that you can’t just tax the moving parts of your software the way someone like you would. […]
Madeup Workshop
Biography It all started with the school bus. I lived twelve miles from town, and every morning I got on the bus at 7 AM. I watched every other kid get picked up. In the afternoon, I watched every other kid get dropped off. At 4 PM, I was home. School started at 8 AM […]
Convert a C++ Exception Into a Java Exception
In Madeup, I needed an exception to propagate from C++ to Java to PHP. I was pretty certain the conventional exception mechanics wouldn’t support this, especially the leap from Java to PHP, but I think I’m wrong. On the C++ side of the JNI bridge, I catch the exception and then throw it back to Java […]