Closing keynote at Øredev2016 Day one about how I became a programmer and how it is our job now to teach others to create the web.

1. SHARING OUR CODER PRIVILEGE
CHRIS HEILMANN (@CODEPO8), ØREDEV, SWEDEN,09/11/2016

2. Christian Heilmann
@codepo8
No university degree
No finished job education
😃 Senior Program Manager at Microsoft
😃 Wrote a few books and hundreds of articles
😃 Worked on some of the biggest web products
out there
😃 Ex-Yahoo, Ex-Mozilla…
😃 Spoke at over 80 conferences in the last few
years
😃 Can afford to live in London

5. MAN, I WAS
AWESOME!
(I GOT A BIT BETTER)

6. IT ALL STARTED
WITH A FLOPPY…

7. I SUCKED AT
PLAYING GAMES -
AND IT WAS
FRUSTRATING.

8. TCS ➜ RUN ➜
ENDLESS LIVES!

9. THOSE CRACKERS
MUST BE
SOMETHING
REALLY SPECIAL!

10. OPEN SESAME!

11. FREEZE GAME ➜
EDIT SCREEN ➜
FIND LIVES COUNTER ADDRESS
(F.E. $0410) ➜
HUNT MEMORY FOR CE 10 04 (DEC
$0410) ➜
REPLACE WITH EA EA EA (NOP
NOP NOP) ➜
ENDLESS LIVES!

12. LET’S GO
THE DOOR WAS OPEN, AND I TOOK ONE
STEP AT A TIME AND KEPT EXPLORING!

13. ENHANCE!
• Level skipper
• Weapons chooser
• Toggle sprite collision
• Learn Assembly language to
write trainer menu
• Find space in memory for said
menu

14. RELEASE!
• Learn about packers to create
smaller version
• Add intro to boast
• Give to people

15. UPPING THE
GAME!
• Removing copy protections
• Level crunchers/packers
• Fast loaders

16. THE HACKER
NEWS OF OLD…

17. COMPETITION
• First release
• Smallest release
• NTSC/PAL fix

18. STANDING OUT
FROM THE
COMPETITION
• Jewel versions
• Bug fixing
• Highscore Savers
• Writing Docs

19. ELITE ACCESS
TOOLING MADE
THE DIFFERENCE
• Packers
• Storage/Transfer tools
• Cross-platform tools
• Creation tools (Assemblers,
Pixel Editors, Sprite tools…)
• BBS/FTP access

20. GOING LEGIT
• Writing tools
• Writing Games
• Coding Intros/Demos
• Moving on…

21. ACCIDENTAL
ARCHIVISM

22. OHAI
CINEMAWARE…

23. ACCIDENTAL
ARCHIVISM
• Floppies ➜ BBS ➜ FTP
• Original storage media is
unreadable
• Original companies gone
• No official backups

24. THINGS I
LEARNED

25. THINGS I
LEARNED
• Nothing can hold you back
when you are good at
analysing and repeating
• Everything you see on screen
came from somewhere - it is
never set in stone
• It is much more fun to explore
and tweak than to get
something handed to you

26. THINGS I
LEARNED
• Working in a limited/unknown
environment is a wonderful
challenge
• You don’t need to feel limited
by the environment you target -
you can use whatever you
want to create for it
• The more people do this, the
more best practices can be
shared.

27. 160 × 200 PIXELS
(ON A 320 × 200 PIXELS DISPLAY)
16 PREDEFINED COLOURS
1 SCREEN-WIDE
BACKGROUND COLOUR.
3 COLOURS IN EACH
8 × 8 (4 × 2) PIXEL
SQUARE

28. 160 × 200 PIXELS
(ON A 320 × 200 PIXELS DISPLAY)
16 PREDEFINED COLOURS
1 SCREEN-WIDE
BACKGROUND COLOUR.
3 COLOURS IN EACH
8 × 8 (4 × 2) PIXEL
SQUARE

29. 160 × 200 PIXELS
(ON A 320 × 200 PIXELS DISPLAY)
16 PREDEFINED COLOURS
1 SCREEN-WIDE
BACKGROUND COLOUR.
3 COLOURS IN EACH
8 × 8 (4 × 2) PIXEL
SQUARE

30. 160 × 200 PIXELS
(ON A 320 × 200 PIXELS DISPLAY)
16 PREDEFINED COLOURS
1 SCREEN-WIDE
BACKGROUND COLOUR.
3 COLOURS IN EACH
8 × 8 (4 × 2) PIXEL
SQUARE
• MUCH BETTER TOOLING
• EXPERIENCE
• SHARED TRICKERY AND
KNOWLEDGE
• LOVE FOR THE PLATFORM

31. HELLO, WEB

32. HELLO VIEW
SOURCE
• A big part of my success on
the web was using view
source and reverse
engineering
• We all did, don’t let people tell
you otherwise
• The lack of distance between
creation and consumption was
really down my alley…

33. HELLO, TOOLS…
• Crawlers, Link checkers
• HTML Validators
• Web Development toolbars
• HTTP proxies, sniffers
• Venkman, Frontpage Express
JS Debugger…

34. VIEW SOURCE+5/
[H]/100%/JEWEL

35. VIEW SOURCE+5/
[H]/100%/JEWEL
• These days, developer tools
have replaced view source
• We have incredible insight into
what our code does in the
browser
• Of course, not everybody is
ready for this…

36. Open sesame!WELCOME TO CYBER SPACE, HELP THE CYBER POLICE!

37. HERE IS WHERE
WE COME IN.
• We are at the forefront of online
media
• We are creators and makers -
not consumers
• We have the privilege of open
tools, an open platform and
openly available
documentation.

38. GETTING STARTED
HAS NEVER BEEN
EASIER…
• Using GitHub, you can host
your code, collaborate,
execute your projects, write
collaborative documentation
and books…
• Using social media we can
promote these products, share
knowledge and invite people
to learn…

39. YOU’RE BUILDING
ON EXISTING
SOLUTIONS…
• You don’t need to start from
scratch - you can contribute to
thousands of existing projects -
many aimed to teach people
how to become a web maker.
• You don’t even need to code.
You can help with UX, or
document, or herd
communities.

40. ONE MAIN THING I
LEARNED IN MY
WHOLE CAREER…
• You learn best by teaching
• Sharing and making people
grow with you is the best
feeling ever
• If you feel down and “not
good enough”, create
something - anything!

41. USE YOUR
FRUSTRATION,
YOUR ANGER AND
YOUR
DEVIOUSNESS
FOR GOOD…
• What we need more than
ever right now is education
• Traditional education is
encumbered by privilege and
costs
• We’ve been lucky - it is time
we give back

43. THE WEB IS THE
MOST VERSATILE
AND NON-ELITE
PLATFORM.
GO AND MAKE
YOUR MARK!

44. Chris Heilmann
christianheilmann.com
@codepo8
Thanks!
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/
microsoft-edge/
developer.mozilla.org