As I start the year off programming with new projects, I want to memorialize a few from my past.
In college (I think it was 2015), back when I wrote a ton of C++, I learned about ncurses and my mind was blown. So on my windows laptop, using Cygwin via an old program called Babun (now discontinued, pre-WSL), I pulled an all-nighter and wrote a terminal space invaders clone for a class project (C++ 101). I remember it well because hours before I pulled the all-nighter, I was in the computer lab with a friend and we also quickly coded up a solution for our Object Oriented Programming class, where we had to code up an generic Allocator for C++ (I think that code is probably lost). It was fun.
Then in 2020, during COVID, a few years into my programming career, I began resurrecting my old code and working on more personal projects. That is when I brought nvaders back from the cold hell that is a dead 2016 Acer laptop in the dusty corner of my closet. I gave it a name,
First thing I did when I began refactoring my 5 year (at the time) old code was update the build system from its original makefile to using CMake. And then I added colors, and refactored the code to use Modern C++ (ie: unique_ptrs and the like).
One day, I will come back to this project and add more features. But its a good memento for now.