Dangerous Dealings

Today I was having a heated discussion about programming with one of my students. They were arguing that if we calculated the scale and location of our object like normal and then adjusted for left and right shift we'd achieve the visual effect we had hoped for. I was arguing that we should adjust for left and right shift before calculations, and incorporate the shift into our current and future calculations.

My student never gives in easily, so I was trying to get them to just try my idea, even though they thought it was stupid. They would not, so I made a deal with them: try it your way, then try it my way and see which works better. They still seemed resistant so I mentioned that they would obviously be able to gloat for the rest of the week about how they knew more than their stupid teacher if I was wrong and they were right.

Well, that made trying my idea acceptable. I realized as they were compiling that I probably had just sealed my reputation around school as the world's worst programmer, but oh well. As it turns out, I was (thankfully) right. The effect we created was really cool - it looks like you're running through trees and you can move left or right, forwards or backwards throughout the forest. Yeah, it's awesome (especially thanks to my super smooth shifting method).

I was right. Yup. I'm breathing a sigh of relief.