For a long time, I’ve been watching the day9 video casts, and it continues to fascinate me. I’m not really trying to become a better starcraft player, but still the strategy discussions surrounding the game are really interesting.
According to day9, being a pro-gamer is like a cross between a chess champion and a racecar driver – a reflection of the infamous macro/micro-playstyle. If you’re even remotely interested in the thought process of pro-gamers, I highly recommend taking a look at a couple of his videocasts. He’s even funny!
When learning a new programming language, I find it very encouraging to look for some kind of interesting project or competition to make use of your newfound knowledge. This time I’m learning Ruby, and I’m participating in the AIIDE Starcraft AI Competition. Tough challenge, but oh so entertaining and incredibly good for my coding skills.
Ruby turns out to be… challenging to get good at. It’s really easy to cludge something together, but it’s also extremely easy to mess things up in a spectaculair fashion. I’m not sure if I like it yet, we’ll see in a couple of days.