from Hacker News

Building Bauble

by ianthehenry on 1/10/25, 10:22 PM with 26 comments

• by troad on 1/11/25, 1:07 AM

  This is so cool. I love this so much. I read the article on my RSS, and then immediately hopped over to HN just so I could upvote.

  > Fortunately though, over the course of Bauble’s development, I had produced a comprehensive suite of test scripts with reference images that demonstrated all of the edge cases and problems that I had faced and already fixed and… No, of course not. I can’t even type that with straight fingers. There were no tests.

  Intensely relatable.

• by peterkos on 1/11/25, 6:25 AM

  After reading this, I am now of the belief that software is, actually, a good thing. And that programming can be enjoyable.

  Seriously, this does such a good job of capturing the feeling of MAGIC that code is capable of -- both in its process and in its output. Textbook "craft". It's hard to experience that sometimes when surrounded by dependency hell, environments, build systems, certain dynamic programming languages, and the modern web ecosystem.

• by xnx on 1/11/25, 1:24 AM

  Wow. Very impressive work and a very readable and interesting summary. You should be immensely proud.

  Personally, it is reassuring to know there are still people out there capable of doing such complicated and quality work. After seeing my 1000th $19/month thin wrapper over uncredited AI, I had doubts.

• by Multiplayer on 1/11/25, 4:00 PM

  Been here for 15 years. This is the most interesting project and writeup I have ever seen here.

• by FragenAntworten on 1/10/25, 11:00 PM

  This is both a great demo of what Bauble can do and an engaging description of its development. I'm impressed by both!

• by skalarproduktr on 1/11/25, 4:46 PM

  Congrats, Ian, on the amazing side project and the thorough and thoroughly enjoyable writeup.

  You really got me with the tests for the original Bauble, I had a good laugh after that paragraph!

  I’m now also somewhat inclined to have a deeper look into Janet, it looks both useful and interesting.

• by dinkumthinkum on 1/11/25, 1:17 AM

  This is very nice. I remember first watching Inigo Quilez videos and they are extremely impressive but this, obviously, gives a little more insight into making something work. Well done.

• by agentkilo on 1/11/25, 8:40 AM

  This article is really inspiring! I have a few dozen half-baked projects, that's meant for no one else but me, to play with, or to "learn new things" from, but none of them ever became so complete and polished as author's Bauble. I can feel the pure enjoyment of crafting from the article. I hope more people can find out about it, and share OP's joy.

  I should really finish what I started. It may take, say, eighteen years, but I should finish them XD

• by uxcolumbo on 1/11/25, 12:59 PM

  This is awesome and inspiring. Thanks for the write up.

  I like the look and style of the game art and making it interactive, somewhat makes me think of the game 'The last night' (still in development).

  Your post made me curious about Janet. Will explore it more and how it can be used for graphics and art.

• by atombender on 1/11/25, 10:55 AM

  The die cast bronze sculptures are very cool. Where does one go to get them cast from 3D models? Sounds very expensive to do as a one-off (the author is a developer at Jane Street, which probably explains why they could afford it).

• by medhir on 1/11/25, 9:16 AM

  Absolutely incredible, the power of persistence can yield such cool results.

  I bookmarked to play around with the editor sometime, I’ve always wanted to learn GLSL and this feels like a more gentle intro into the world of shaders.

• by tempodox on 1/11/25, 4:21 PM

  Fuck Apple, I'm only getting “TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'renderer.recompileShader')” in Safari. It works in Firefox.

• by flir on 1/11/25, 2:45 PM

  That was fantastic on, like, eight different levels.

• by keeptrying on 1/11/25, 3:06 AM

  Beautiful

• by mrayycombi on 1/11/25, 1:02 AM

  3d latex