Programming Throwdown, Episode 160 Position Localization.

Take it away, Patrick. welcome to a nice ending in zero episodes

it's like a yeah 10th thing 160 16 10s we've had it's our sweet 16 sweet deca 16 I guess

oh I was trying to come up thank you that was. So I want to talk about something that I feel was

always loitered around. I remember it going back a little bit of a nostalgia trip

and then we're going to take it forward. So I'm going to give why I'm bringing it up

and then I'll sort of get into my monologue here. But I remember going back to

okay, not all the way when I was thinking that's too far. But I remember going back to, okay, not all the way when I was thinking

that's too far. But I remember going back to like the early 2000s and they're being portable

PCs. So not like a laptop. I mean, there's kind of been a thing. Like it's kind of obvious.

But I'm talking about something and sort of like, okay, like a Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, that form factor. And the reason I'm bringing this up is the Steam Deck. So the Steam Deck is now sort of generally available. Just recently it's been like, I think they're going to be in retail shops in Japan. I saw some cool pictures. And so instead of this hyped up, you know, hard to get big waiting lists, you have to pay over asking,

the Steam Deck has come out. And I'm going to talk about, so I have one. I hadn't played it a lot, but now I've been playing it more and more. And I'm going to sort of talk about like my journey, but also this nostalgia trip of, I remember there used to be Sony stores, Sony retail stores. And there was a specific mall. I was older, but we in the, this must have, I didn't look at it. I actually looked it up, like 2001, 2002, 2003, that time frame. And you would go to the Sony store and they would have, you know, the digital cameras. They would have these little like bio computers that had like little tiny keyboards and like a screen. I never knew that. Before the iPhone,, before the iPhone, right before sort of on screen, capacitive sensing, it was like resistive touch. They didn't have a long life. There wasn't, you know, data over cell networks, wasn't like an everyday person thing. And so it just weren't all that compelling. Maybe if you had like a very specific use case, you know, you would have done it. But for most folks, it wasn't super compelling. And I feel like, you know, they kind of ran Windows. Maybe you could get one that run Linux if you were an elite hacker or had some specific thing. But, you know, they kind of languished around. And then the Steam Deck for some reason, like captured my, my excitement. Maybe in part it's just I have this belief that I'm

going to be a video gamer, even though I'm not really a video gamer. I'm just a casual game. Like I play just, you know, iOS games or whatever. I'm not not big on PC games. I hardly ever sit at my computer and play. And I do have one. It is not technically a gaming PC, but I just have a GPU, it is capable. I just don't sit there

and play it very often, but I got the

Steam deck, and I already had a bunch of games.

Huge appeal to me that a gaming PC, but I just have a GPU. It is capable. I just don't sit there and play it very often,

but I got the Steam Deck and I already had a bunch of games. Huge appeal to me that, you know, you can have lots of concerns about DRM or whatever. I'm just going to leave that aside for this conversation, but through various humble bundles and other things, I picked up lots of, you know, five to 10 year old video games, which was like perfect for the Steam deck.

So can the Steam deck play anything? Like, what's the connection between Steam and the Steam deck? So this is the part that's really cool. So first, it already comes built in with access to your Steam library. Okay. The second thing is the way they've made it is, you know, in contrast to a lot of cell phones, it's very commodity parts. So it's a x86 processor from AMD with an integrated GPU. And by default, it runs on SteamOS, which is built on top of Linux. But it very easily will let you drop back into Linux. You can attach a keyboard and mouse and like install your own packages. Wow.

But you could also install Windows. You can dual boot. I haven't done that. It's a little off the beaten path because they're still working bios changes and stuff to build it. One day I think I'll do that. For now I'm not. So what they've done is they have this library called Proton. And Proton, I'm pretty sure this is great. proton is sort of like what wine, wine did, right?

Like providing the Windows 8,

A, this library called Proton. And Proton, I'm pretty sure this is great. Proton is sort of like what wine did, right?

Like providing the Windows API calls and doing a translation under the hood.

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