Zen of Graphics Programming
by Michael Abrash · first published 1994
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Practical, example-driven tour of graphics techniques like Bresenham line drawing and BSP trees, with anecdotes that make hard topics engaging; many readers say it sparked their interest in programming and math.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Michael Abrash' "Zen of Graphics Programming" has a good overview of many of the tricks used during that era: http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Graphics-Programming-Ultimate-Writ... (now, of course, mainly to be read for nostalgic reasons).
on “Doom engine code review” ↗…that I did not write a rasterizer for those as all they needed to do whas convert to other formats. I did write rasterization code for a Win95 driver for HP that was very fast. I used Michael Abrash's Zen of Graphics Programming as a starting point and extended/expanded on his algorithms. This time around I wanted to focus on the PostScript language itself and cairo saved me a lot of time on the hind end. Though it does have…
on “Show HN: PostForge – A PostScript interpreter written in Python” ↗I implemented Bresenham's algorithm in ARM assembly on the gameboy advance based on reading his 'zen of graphics programming'. Great writer, the anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter really hooked me in.
on “Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book” ↗Um, holy shit! Part of the reason I'm a programmer today is I read Zen of Graphics Programming when I was 16 and I just had to get my own bsp tree algorithm working. Thank you.
on “Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and you’ll be a hero."” ↗The book Zen of Graphics Programming was one of the seminal books that got me deeply interested in programming. There's a good argument that my life today is as good as it is in no small part to the hard work Mr. Abrash put into that book.…
on “Abrash on Valve: How I Got Here, What It's Like, and What I'm Doing” ↗It's a fun journey -- I hope you enjoy it! I never liked math, until I read Abrash's "Zen of Graphics Programming", and learned that graphics is chock-full of math :D
on “Ask HN: What Are You Learning?” ↗…http://amzn.to/ Types and Programming Languages, Pierce http://amzn.to/2qT2d6G Understanding MySQL Internals, Pachev http://amzn.to/2svXuFo Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Feathers http://amzn.to/2sIr09R Zen of graphics programming, Abrash http://amzn.to/2rKIW6Q
on “Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?” ↗Abrash's Zen of Graphics Programming was my first programming book I really loved.. still thanks, but no thanks. > Well, Google has some new, ridiculous thing, they're marketing glasses which have a small computer on them. So you can be…
on “Inventing the Future” ↗The headline and the body are posing two different questions. Regarding books that impacted my career in software. The top three are: 1) K&R C 2) Zen of Graphics Programming 3) C++ Programming Language, 2E I wouldn't recommend any of these to a young version of myself today.
on “Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?” ↗Very tangentially related, but curious if anything thinks it would be worth reading through Abrash's Zen Of Graphics Programming at this point. Is the info in there still useful (even as a foundation) or is it totally outdated?
on “Wolfenstein's original rendering engine as 450 line shader with no external data” ↗…Programming Black Book I'd temper one's expectations on this one. It's a massive, unwieldy book, mostly speaking to old PC VGA graphics programming techniques, in pages taken verbatim from Abrash's previous Zen of Graphics Programming book. It definitely isn't focused on a specific game, but it does go a bit into the BSP tree stuff used in Doom, if memory serves. Maybe it's just because I had already read both his Zen of {Code Optimization,…
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗Nice. I own the actual book itself. It is seriously hardcore. It always weighs a ton. I had no idea it was rare and/or worth anything. Also own the related Zen of Graphics Programming book by Abrash.
on “Graphics Programming Black Book (1997)” ↗