I'm 35, Web Dev since 2009, work from home (2 hours away from work) since 2020, and my company just decided that they want everyone back at the office immediately, or quit.

So I quat. And I decided I'll never be an employee ever again. I'm gonna make a living out of my passions: write a book, create video games, adopt pets, photo, video, and if I run out of money I can still do Web Dev as freelance.

Frightening but also exciting!

0Thread HN

Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand? 4 years ago

- Regular Expressions

- Unicode and characters encodings

- Native WebGL

- CSS3D

- Women

I lied about women.

0Thread HN

Ask HN: As you get older, do you see programming as merely a means to an end? 4 years ago

Been coding for ~20 years and I still see coding as an "end" (ie. an interesting goal) even when I'm making apps or games where the code is invisible to the end user

0Thread HN

Show HN: I made a WebGL-based app that traces images using circles 4 years ago

Here's my implementation, also inspired by these videos

It was made in 1kb for the JS1K demo competition: https://js1k.com/2018-coins/demo/3124

Detailed source code: https://github.com/xem/epicycles/blob/gh-pages/index.html

Controls:

- Arrow keys: up / down to change the number of gears, left to toggle intermediate paths, right to clear the scene.

- Mouse: click to add points to the path

0Thread HN

Ask HN: What is the most complex concept you understand? 5 years ago

I have a few: JavaScript code-golfing; CSS3D art; WebGL (traditional and as in shadertoy); Unicode; 6502 / NES emulation

0Thread HN

Show HN: A TO-DO app that fits inside a single tweet 6 years ago

The "ungolfed" code looks like this:

<input id=i> <a onclick='u.innerHTML+="<li onclick=innerHTML=innerHTML.strike()>"+i.value'>+ <a onclick=u.innerHTML="">X</a> <ol id=u>

There are 4 occurrences of "innerHTML" and 3 occurrences of " onclick='" so I replaced those two substrings with H and o.

The whole HTML is rendered using an ES6 template literal (document.write(` ... `))

Everytime a ${H} or a ${o} is present in the template, the value of H or o is copied here.

It's a native feature of JS since ES6.

Besides that, the second <a> implicitly closes the first <a>, so no need to use </a>. The id's are global, that's why we can access i.value or u.innerHTML directly. In onclick, "this" (the current element) is implicit. Finally, the strikethrough is done using the (deprecated but still working) .strike() String method.

0Thread HN

Show HN: A TO-DO app that fits inside a single tweet 6 years ago

My solution in 155 chars, vanilla JS

Demo: https://codepen.io/xem/pen/dypVzaw?editors=1100

Cheers :)

0Thread HN

Barebones WebGL in 75 lines of code 6 years ago

Hi, Here's my tutorial for going much further than a colored triangle, with very few code too: https://xem.github.io/articles/webgl-guide.html

0Thread HN

Ask HN: Have any of you moved back home to save money? 6 years ago

I've been allowed to continue working from home (at my parents' house) since lockdown and save 800€/month (half of my paycheck) :)

0Thread HN

Ask HN: What do you know almost nobody else does? 6 years ago

- CSS3D, a fun and easy way to make 3D scenes / games in the browser without WebGL. To my knowledge, we are about 5 people to use it (https://xem.github.io/articles/css3dgames.html)

- JS code-golfing... I'm not alone but we're a small community, who enjoy making JS programs / art / games with the smallest possible amount of code (js1k.com, js13kgames.com, dwitter.net, ...)

- Unicode, its quirks, its updates (not only emoji), its encodings and its predecessors charsets

- Regexes (everyone hates them but I enjoy using them)

- Browsers hacks and polyfills (remember IE6? Firefox 3? Chrome 1? With enough effort, you could make them do almost everything that modern browsers can do today. My job has been to do exactly that for many years, and it was actually pretty fun)

0Thread HN

Ask HN: Show Us Your Personal Website/Blog? 7 years ago

http://xem.github.io

I'm Maxime, front-end developer and passionate of JavaScript code-golfing.

I make tiny JS demos & games for fun or for contests like JS1K.com and JS13Kgames.com, and write about them (among other front-end experiments) here.

There's also a lot of tech watch and projects involving other topics like retro consoles emulation, Unicode, WebGL, and even a collection of memes and jokes.

Feel free to send feedback, even negative.

(I know the site's style is a bit old now, but I'm updating it!)

Cheers :)

0Thread HN

Ask HN: What's the most important piece of code you've written? 8 years ago

"<!doctype html>"

Four years ago, I was hired to reboot the front-end development of a french search engine from a blank html page. It has millions of users now.

0Thread HN

Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2018? 8 years ago

Real estate

Bought 3 student apartments in 2012 (when I was 24) and finished paying them at the beginning of 2018.

The apartments are entirely managed by an agency that finds the student, collects the money, does all the maintainance, and give me a fixed, guaranteed income.

This income is about 50% of what the students pay (about 330€ for me when the student pays 600).

So now I have 1000€ of passive income per month and only need to do my accounts once a year.

(In France, you can use a company to rent your apartments and avoid paying taxes, so I do that)

I'll probably buy 2 or 3 more in the future to be able to "retire early" and become an indie game dev full time.

0Thread HN

Show HN: ~200 byte in-browser, no JS, private notepad 8 years ago

For the record, here's the smallest notepad with local persistence we've golfed in JS: http://xem.github.io/postit/ (github: https://github.com/xem/postit/)

0Thread HN

Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful x86 assembly code? 8 years ago

If you're interested in demoscene, this explains how to make x86 programs in 256b or less: http://sizecoding.org/

...

and yes, I consider it beautiful x86 code :)

0Thread HN

Show HN: A Face-Detection Library in 200 Lines of JavaScript 8 years ago

Here's a similar app but golfed in 280b: https://twitter.com/MaximeEuziere/status/987222337081704448

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

Hey, the new version and its updated code are live! http://xem.github.io/sheet/

0Thread HN

Js13kGames Winners – JavaScript games with a file size limit of 13KB 9 years ago

yah, sorry, it works best on Chrome (Win10, Mac or Android)

0Thread HN

Js13kGames Winners – JavaScript games with a file size limit of 13KB 9 years ago

Hi! yup, only CSS and emoji. :) if you want to know a bit more, here's a making-of: http://xem.github.io/articles#js13k17

0Thread HN

Js13kGames Winners – JavaScript games with a file size limit of 13KB 9 years ago

Yeah sorry, apple-eating is basically the only detail I didn't explain, thinking it was the most normal thing to do when you control a snake :)

0Thread HN

Js13kGames Winners – JavaScript games with a file size limit of 13KB 9 years ago

Thanks man! I made this game by (ab)using the power of CSS and CSS3D, and really focused on the player experience, so I'm glad you enjoyed it! If you continue playing, you'll see even more surprises :) Also, here's a making-of: http://xem.github.io/articles#js13k17

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

Okay :) We're still removing a few bytes but when it's done I'll make a commented version.

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

awesome! (oh noes, it gets rid of the +-~j trick! :D)

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

Well, it's a 3 years old app, and we like it in this "minimal" form. We've made a lot of other mini apps, tools and games though, you can find the link on top of xem.github.io/sheet

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

NB: as mentioned in the "AMA" page, the whole team also helped a lot to reduce the size of this app after I got into the game, it's not just golfed by me.

Cheers

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

good thing we made it just for fun, then

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

of course! Thanks, I'm adding this enhancement on github!

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

Sure, i explained it here earlier today: https://github.com/xem/sheet/issues/4

0Thread HN

A 220b spreadsheet app in HTML/JS 9 years ago

I'll take his comment as a joking sarcasm anyway.

0Thread HN