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Because the knowledge of OpenGL I have so far comes from a variety of sources. I should be keeping track of all the best places to get the information I frequently reference whenever I learn things or need to look up a function. So this post will serve as a reminder of some of my learning sources in my journey.

The specifications for various versions can be found here.
https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/index_gl.php

The reference that I use the most frequently for my legacy OpenGL programming. Something about the layout is pleasing to me.
https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL-Refpages/gl2.1/

Another great reference that shows several different versions. Perfect for looking up a function and seeing which versions support it.
http://docs.gl/

The lazyfoo tutorials were how I personally got my very first start in OpenGL. However it took me a long time because I converted the examples into pure ansi C89 instead of the original C++. Most people wouldn’t do this.
http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/OpenGL/index.php

Although I have had great success in using OpenGL for some animations I’ve published on YouTube, Rumble, and other social media, I do find that the subject of OpenGL is weirdly intimidating for new people trying to learn about it. It’s the burden of choice of which libraries to use for creating the context(glfw vs. freeglut) or for loading modern extensions (glad vs. glew), or whether to use legacy vs. more modern core versions.

There are so many different types of programmers who each have their own opinion on how things should be done as well and the people who make decisions on specifications and different support in GPUs or Operating systems that perhaps using OpenGL for graphics is not ever going to be as simple as using a different library(SDL, Allegro, SFML, Raylib) or even a different programming language which has graphics built into its standard library(Freebasic,Java,etc.).

Basically programming(especially graphics) is not as easy as I thought it was when I first started at 14 years old. But at the same time the challenge is precisely why I love it so much. If it was something anybody could do, it would not be as great of an accomplishment. I know a bit but I also know how much there is that I don’t know. But the journey has made me smarter. Perhaps someday I will even write a programming book or at least a tutorial that I make available online.

Making software in this modern age makes a real world difference. The software is just as important as the hardware it runs on when you consider that the internet and the information available to people makes a real world difference in who lives or dies. Therefore even basic knowledge I have attained such as managing my websites and my journey into exploring open source software has enabled me to know enough to publish my books and also my mom’s books. The software that powers book publishing as well as what we are able to find online is the only hope we have for improvement in this world because it allows information to travel to people faster than ever before.

Also I want to give a big thumbs up to my friend Poffo Ortiz who is a very powerful Vegan activist and author of several of his own books. I am at this time at page 130 of his book: “The Portal of Adamastos”. I haven’t finished it yet but this book is really interesting! You can find this book and others linked to from his site here:

https://poffoman13.wixsite.com/morndaybooks

And last but not least, do not forget about my recently published book: “Chandler’s Honesty”
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08T4DGJL1
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1064601

I do believe I have talked about more topics in one post than ever before. I leave you now with one final piece of advice:

Be excellent to each other
and
PARTY ON, DUDES!

I have been in the process of learning modern OpenGL and I was finally able to get a full working example. However the means I did so was complicated. I had to copy paste examples from two entirely different tutorials and mash them together for the purposes of what I wanted. One tutorial used SFML for context creation but set up the Vertex Buffer Object, Vertex Array Object, and shaders for a 2D drawing. The other tutorial used GLFW and glad for setting up the context but then was using 3D coordinates and did not have examples of shaders that I understood. I merged the two tutorial examples into one and the result was about 150 lines of code to draw a triangle.

So far all my work has not enabled me to do anything new that I couldn’t do with legacy OpenGL but the way this was set up with glad was so that only the modern functions are loaded and all the deprecated functions like glbegin/end cannot be used. I’m learning the modern way but so far it seems like the modern way is stupid compared to the old legacy way. But at the same time there is supposed to be some performance benefit from what I read. I have two free youtube tutorials I can follow as well as the opengl course on linkedin.

But one really weird thing is that compiling things still requires the weirdest set of flags and each opengl tutorial uses different libraries for context creation and extension loading. So I’m having a hard time making sense of much, but I can brag that I wasted 12 hours of my life drawing a triangle! This is why I am glad computer programming is something I do for fun and not my paid job.

I took screenshots of the entire program!

This video is made possible by Streamyard, the easiest browser based live stream software I have ever used. This was streamed to my YouTube channel live but I downloaded the recording so that I could also upload it to many places and have great backups.

In this live stream, I read my entire first book, commented on each chapter, and even replied to the comments I was getting in real time from user Hungry Billy Bruce. It would be my most interesting video I have ever done so far. Confessions of a Confused Virgin was the first book I ever wrote and was chosen for this video because it’s the shortes of all of my books as well.

You can find this book and others in ebook form on my Smashwords profile.

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chastitywhiterose

Additionally you can buy a paperback of this same book on Amazon.

If you like this book I highly encourage you to support me as an author by buying my latest and greatest book title: “Chandler’s Honesty”. It is known as my unicorn book and more work went into it than any previously published book of mine.

C: I do hope that the world will be better and that somehow I am make a difference, but I do not see evidence of change as I would like.

H: Evidence won’t get you very far in life, Chastity. What evidence of improving the world are you looking for. Do you even know?

C: No, I guess I don’t know what type of evidence I could find or that I would accept. I must see things as they are and only then can I accept the evidence of my eyes.

H: But what about the evidence of your heart?

C: What do you mean?

H: You know in your heart that things in the world are not as they should be, but yet, you have never once SEEN the world as you want it to be and as you know it should be. So do you believe your eyes or your heart?

C: I never have thought of it this way. I guess there are times where what I hope to see is not based on what I had seen previously, for the world was wrong before I was born yet I knew it was wrong even though I never saw anything else.

H: If you ask me, you have great faith.

C: Faith? Is that what you call believing without evidence?

H: That is what some humans say, but I have a different way of saying it. I say that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

C: Evidence of things not seen?

H: Yes, there are many things that you believe that you have never seen with your eyes of your body. This is why I say you have great faith, because nothing you see will change what you believe about the things that matter most.

C: You said faith is the substance of things hoped for. What is hope and how is it related to faith?

H: You said before that you hope we will all head in the same direction if we don’t give up on our dreams and follow our hearts. When you hope for something, you want it, you desire it, you wish for it greatly. Faith is when you believe somehow that your wishes will come true.

C: There are many things I hope for, the things which I desire.

H: What is your greatest of your hopes? If there were a genie that could grant you one wish, what would it be?

My latest book with Honesty the Unicorn is available on both Amazon and Smashwords.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1064601

Amazon has both the paperback and kindle editions and Smashwords also has more ebook formats including epub which can be opened in iBooks on any iPhone.

I very much hope that my friends who are brave enough to read it can write some reviews. Not everybody can understand this book but those who do will find a story of recovery from religious indoctrination and some symbolic meanings about the connections between Celibacy, Veganism, Unicorns, and even some of the teachings of Jesus in the Bible.