• Question: Have u made any programmes and if u did what was the reason behind it

    Asked by gown532rynd94 on 31 Mar 2026.
    • Photo: David Bibby

      David Bibby answered on 31 Mar 2026:

      Yes, lots. But mostly when I was younger while I was learning how to program. I made simple games, like text based games, and a basic platform game.

      But mostly I was interested in utility type programmes. I made a tool that helped theatre/concert riggers calculate point loading when hanging lighting or sound equipment from the roof as a friend asked me if I could for his job. I made a complete autocue system for the collage TV studio I worked for. And I did a lot of Web programming as part of an early job I had making something called a Content Management System.

      For most of my career the programming I’ve done is all whats called “backend” programming and Infrastructure as Code. This means that I write a lot of code, but not really any programs! The code I write builds servers and networks so that other people’s programmes can run in large distributed cloud environments.

    • Photo: Luke Humphrey

      Luke Humphrey answered on 7 Apr 2026:

      For work I’ve written quite a few, mostly these have been python programs intended for use by our engineers to give them access to machine learning techniques and advanced simulation workflows.

      Often, the most cutting edge computational science/engineering techniques don’t come with a nice user interface. This means there isn’t much adoption right away from engineers who are more comfortable using programs in a graphical user interface (GUI). (This is not unexpected or problematic, it’s just that their specialisms lie elsewhere.)

      The more computer savvy engineers may be willing to engage with a command line interface or some amount of python scripting, so we usually start by working with those engineers to develop programs that support the workflows they would like to deploy to support their work. In the long term, these can grow into fully graphical programs with a much wider userbase, but it’s an iterative process.

      The other thing we try to do is get them running their work on HPC clusters (supercomupters) which is a similar idea, it’s something very useful to their work that just has a bit too much barrier to entry without some programs to help them to use it.

      In my free time, I’ve also started dabbling in game development but for now I’ve just followed some tutorials using Godot, nothing fully original so far.

      I avoid vibe coding / using genAI.

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