Journalism Interview: Dan
Interviewed by EnigmaticGallivanter and Stephen001
EG: How did you meet Tom (your side)?
Dan: Tom and I met at Harvey Mudd College. Our first project together was whole-heartedly nerdy. We skipped out of lecture to work on a visualization of an electrodynamic system using a program we called "wavetank".
EG: We've heard Tom's side of how DUNG was originally started, but can you give us your side?
Dan: As Tom said, once we could type on one keyboard and see a little creature moving around on a different computer, we felt a thrill so compelling that we were hooked on the project. Eventually we hit on the idea of adding a language. One of the starting pieces of code used in the language was from a C obfuscater one of us had designed as a class project. We used the parser part of it, not the part that generates semantically equivalent code that is uncommented, poorly formated, and with variable names such as '_'.
DUNG was a sort of tongue-in-cheek name for the project in the early years. Amazingly, some people still gave us the benefit of the doubt and tried out the early releases.
EG: Had you and Tom never made DUNG/BYOND, where do you think you would be now?
Dan: Well, if we hadn't made BYOND, maybe we would have made it big on Wavetank II.
EG: What did you do / make for on BYOND (minus the concept of the thing)?
Dan: I tended to work on the "backend". Doesn't sound very glamorous, when one says it like that.
EG: What parts of BYOND/DUNG were mostly your ideas?
Dan: The bad ones? We wrote a lot of emails back and forth (since we were often thousands of miles apart, and tended to work about 12 hours out of sync). Most of the ideas emerged from that dialog, and the great people who all got involved.
EG: Do you still keep in contact with Tom?
Dan: We met earlier this year when I was in his part of the country. I nearly didn't recognize him because he looked so young. I think he may have had trouble recognizing me because I look so old. However, the dreams were still the same.
EG: You haven't had much BYOND interacting since 2002, have you visited the site recently?
Dan: I do check it out now and then. It looks slick. There have been some nice changes.
EG: Do you miss BYOND?
Dan: Yup.
EG: Do you think that in later days you'll return back to the BYOND Community?
Dan: One can always hope.
EG: Back in your days, did you enjoy the games that were produced on BYOND?
Dan: Yeah. It was a thrill to see what people concocted--some stuff I didn't even think was possible to do in BYOND, but there's a creative abuse of every feature.
EG: Have you ever played some of BYOND's games?
Dan: Like Tom, I'm not really much of a game player, but I did enjoy seeing what people created.
EG: Have you ever produced a game on BYOND?
Dan: Nothing too serious: PipeStock and GoldenStool.
EG: In today's BYOND Society, we have so many rips (duplicate games with minor changes, or 0 changes) that fill this site, how would you deal with them so that BYOND can get back on track and produce a variety of different games?
Dan: Combat the rips with chamomile tea. Then perhaps they will "rest in peace".
EG: With the site now in the hands of Tom with the help of LummoxJR and Nadrew, do you think the site is doing well without you there to dual-lead with Tom?
Dan: I'm impressed by what's been done. Of course I miss being involved, but my hat is off to those who carry on.
EG: When you were younger what interested you in computers?
Dan: I was thrilled the moment I first typed
10 PRINT "Hello, world!"EG: Programming can be stressful sometimes, what kept you motivated through all your work?
Dan: Feature creep.
EG: What is your current job now?
Dan: I work for the University of Wisconsin on a distributed computation system called Condor. I focus on developments needed by the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
EG: What do you do at your current job?
Dan: Program, as much as possible. But also lots of email, meetings, grant reports.
EG: Do you enjoy your current job?
Dan: It has worked out well. I can pretend that I am using my physics degree, without having to go through grad school.
EG: Let's learn about a day in Dan's shoes; can you tell us about your average day?
Dan: Bike along Wingra Creek and into campus. Check to see if all the scientists are happy with their computations. If not, try to make them happy. Write some code. Bike home. Play with the kids.
EG: What is your hobby?
Dan: We've got a vegetable garden and a small orchard. I don't want to think about winter right now, so I'll pretend like that keeps me busy year round.
EG: When stressed, what to you do to relax?
Dan: Something other than what I am supposed to be doing. I find that very relaxing ... for a while.
EG: What programming languages do you know?
Dan: C++, Python, Visual Basic, and, of course, DM
EG: When you were younger, what was one of your favorite things to do?
Dan: I read ravenously
EG: What is your highest level of education?
Dan: BS (Bachelor of Science)
EG: What was your favorite class to take?
Dan: I really enjoyed my first introduction to Special Relativity. I felt like I was on the verge of understanding the universe. Then I learned Quantum Mechanics and I realized quite the opposite.
Stephen Asks
Stephen: The concept of a language based around objects as opposed to just functions and modules must have been very new when you started DUNG. What made you create this style of language?
Dan: Well, back in the mid 90s, C++ had been around for a while. Object oriented programming was still a buzz word, but it wasn't by any stretch a novel concept. It fit quite naturally into DM.
Stephen: In BYOND, the programmer does not have to worry about networking. This has made BYOND very appealing with the rise of online gaming. What made you decide to make BYOND very easy for online games? Did you anticipate the importance of networking in the future of gaming?
Dan: Networking was at the core of the idea from the very beginning. Making programs interact with each across the network just seemed amazingly thrilling. Still does.
Stephen: What made you decide to have a central "hub" for BYOND games? How do you feel this has helped BYOND grow?
Dan: We wanted an easy way for people to share code and publish their creations. Providing a hub seemed like a good way to accomplish that. It was never clear to me how well this would scale, both technically and sociologically, but it still seemed worth a shot.
Stephen: How did you and Tom divide up all the technical work, was each task given to whomever was more suitable?
Dan: We never made formal decisions about, well, anything. We got up in the morning (or Tom's time-shifted equivalent of morning) and decided what we personally wanted to work on most, and then we did it. That's a recipe for some great creative work but also for a few things slipping through the cracks. In my philosophy, that's what cracks are for.
