The random ramblings of a French programmer living in Norway...
 

Who am I?

Hi, I'm Mickael Pointier, and this is my Blog.

I'm originaly from France, but I moved to Norway quite a while ago.

What do I do?

I work as a video game developper at Funcom, mostly in the "Tech and tools" department.

Before that I worked in France in multiple companies, like Adeline Software, Heliovisions and Eden Games, where I worked on games released on PlayStation (1, 2, 3), PC, Xbox (1 and 360), Dreamcast, etc...

On the leisure side, I enjoy retro gaming and software development on old plateforms, demo-making, blogging, and doing the occasional YouTube video.

Why blogging?

I know these days people like to consume bite-sized content, but I personally like to take my time and go in-depth on topics, and blogging is quite good for that

Regarding the topics, these days I tend to do a lot of documentation regarding past projects: There's been a surge of interest on all things retro, and I'd rather document myself the things I worked on, than less some people who were not there write some half-truths based on second or third hand information

Ok, that's interesting, where can I follow you?

You can follow what I'm doing on a number of locations

  • My 'Dbug's Stuff' YouTube channel
  • The 'Dbug' DemoZoo page
  • My Twitter account
  • I'm often on IRC (IRCnet) on the #Oric, #atariscene, #c-64 and a few other channels

FAQ

Here is a bunch of questions I've been asked, and what my current answers are:
  • Q: Which languages can you speak?
    A: French, English, and some broken Norwegian

  • Q: I meant computer programming languages!
    A: My bad! Well, I'm mostly writting code in C++ at work. This website is written in PHP, my Atari demos are 100% written in 68000, my Oric stuff is generally mostly 6502 called from C, and I do a tiny bit of javascript now and then. Back in the days I also did some MIPS R3000 for the PlayStation, a bit of SH4 on Dreamcast, some COBOL, PROLOG and Pascal at university, but it all started by some BASIC on the Oric Atmos.

  • Q: Why C++ and not Rust. Why not Haskell?
    A: I like the concepts introduced by Rust and Haskell, but I don't like the syntax: I like my code to read like litterature, not like magic incantations or mathematical formulas.

  • Q: Why just Oric and Atari, no love for the C64, Spectrum or Thomson TO7?
    A: It's easy to fall in the trap of trying to collect everything and play with everything. These two machines were what I had when I was younger, and there are still things to do on them for a lifetime!

  • Q: Do you plan to go back to France?
    A: For holidays, definitely ;)

  • Q: What's your favorite console?
    A: That's an easy one: The Dreamcast

  • Q: Are you planning to release Encounter one day?
    A: Yes. One day indeed.

  • Q: Are these actual questions asked by people?
    A: Yes they are.