Terminal on Cesar Gimenes

Plasma Effect in the Terminal with Golang

crg@crg.eti.br (Cesar Gimenes) — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 17:34:13 -0300

One kind of program I’ve always found interesting is the demo: eye-catching graphical effects with code that squeezes every ounce of performance out of the machine. The plasma effect is one of my favorites, simulating a fluid in motion.

To create the plasma effect, I use several trigonometric functions to calculate the background color of each character, passing time as a parameter to generate the animation. The code is relatively simple, but the optimization is a bit more complex.

Happy 2025, Fireworks in the Terminal with Golang

crg@crg.eti.br (Cesar Gimenes) — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 13:09:42 -0300

A small program celebrates the arrival of 2025 with fireworks in the terminal. It includes several interesting tricks to start your year with plenty of code.

We use os.Stdout.WriteString to write directly to the stdout descriptor, that is, the terminal’s standard output. This is the fastest way to write to the terminal, but it is not synchronized. That means there is no guarantee the output will be written in the expected order. In our case, though, this is desirable because it lets the fireworks overlap, giving the impression that they are exploding simultaneously.

Rewriting the Old TSR Using Bash

crg@crg.eti.br (Cesar Gimenes) — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 17:26:25 -0300

When I started programming, computing was different from today. The operating system was single-tasking; only one program could run at a time. There were no modern features like protected and mapped memory. Even so, it was possible to create concurrent behavior in programs, but you had to be careful to keep any part from blocking execution. For example, there could be no loops waiting for keyboard input or very long processes. Writing a non-blocking program was tricky in languages like Clipper.