# New Programmer/Musican/Tester
**URL:** https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817
**Category:** Introductions
**Created:** [August 27, 2021, 6:10pm UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817 "2021-08-27T18:10:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jonathon594](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Jonathon594)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2021, 6:10pm UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/1 "2021-08-27T18:10:10Z")
**About Me**
Hello, My name is Jonathon Owens. I am a self taught programmer and musician, and avid gamer. I started learning C# when I was 13 (from a guy I met on runescape) because it seemed cool too me and I never really expected to be here 14 years later. I’ve honestly struggled with feeling validated as a programmer, as I have no real professional experience and my biggest project is a minecraft overhaul mod which I’ve put several years into; So it’s absolutely amazing to have my talents acknowledged here.
When I first saw Thrive I was like wow, this is good, it’s like spore for grown ups, and when I found out it was open source I knew I wanted to get involved but it wasn’t until my friend who introduced me to Thrive; Who subsequently got a degree in programming told me to no sell myself short as a programmer. So here I am, and I hope I can be of help.
**Skills**
Programmer/Game Logic - My main focus will probably on code as I feel it’s most needed right now. I have a strong grasp on game logic, efficient code.
Musician - I’ve been playing guitar for about as long as I’ve been coding, however; I can be considered a professional here as I have been employed by Guitar Center as an instructor. I also can play bass, drums, piano, and flute. I also have pretty good recording equipment as well.
[My Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/jonathon-owens-2) - These are a bit older, I have newer equipment now, but these are my original works.
Tester - I play alot of games, and I also regularly debug my mod project so I know what to look for in game testing. Once I get more familiar with the code base I feel like I will also be able to help out by finding bugs and pointing to the appropriate place in code or just outright submitting a PR to fix it.
**Wrapping Up**
That’s about it for my tangent of an introduction. I’m happy to be here, and look forward to helping this game grow!
---
### Author:  [@Thim](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Thim)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2021, 7:48pm UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/2 "2021-08-27T19:48:08Z")
Small world: I got started with Minecraft modding back in the day! I do wish this project was in Java sometimes…
---
### Author:  [@Jonathon594](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Jonathon594)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/3 "2021-08-27T19:53:30Z")
Honestly C# and Java are so similar I practically have them in the place in my brain with their differences in a separate spot. I do find myself going for(type var : list) a lot though and going oh right… C# uses “in”
---
### Author:  [@Thim](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Thim)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2021, 8:26pm UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/4 "2021-08-27T20:26:10Z")
Any particularly exciting C# adventures?
---
### Author:  [@Maxonovien](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Maxonovien)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2021, 9:38pm UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/5 "2021-08-27T21:38:04Z")
That makes 3 of us (at least) who started with minecraft. World’s small indeed haha. I believe our generation was heavily influenced by it.
Anyways, welcome to the team! 😁
---
### Author:  [@Jonathon594](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Jonathon594)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2021, 1:55am UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/6 "2021-08-28T01:55:03Z")
To be fair, I’m 27, I started modding minecraft a bit later than I think most do. I started actually on terraria which was C#
---
### Author:  [@Jonathon594](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/Jonathon594)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2021, 1:57am UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/7 "2021-08-28T01:57:09Z")
Honestly I mostly made windows forms applications for fun. Most of my experience is in Java, but I’ve just always had a knack for C# since they are similar. I recently started messing with it again and made a simple TCP network library just to see if I could.
Ah it’s starting to come back to me, I made an old game similar to 1945 back in XNA game studio, and I remade it in Unity at one point years later.
---
### Author:  [@hhyyrylainen](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/u/hhyyrylainen)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2021, 8:51am UTC](https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/new-programmer-musican-tester/817/8 "2021-08-29T08:51:32Z")
Welcome to the team. A bit late, but I wasn’t feeling pressured to reply as you got other replies, which is pretty rare…
Anyway seeing as you already got started with the programming changes. I’ll instead suggest that you could also get into reviewing PRs (as we are often pretty short on people available to review other’s work to make sure it is good quality). And on the testing front I’d like to see testing on this major editor MP rework:
>
>
> \*\*Brief Description of What This PR Does\*\*
>
> This PR replaces the old logic wit…h dynamic MP calculation. This new algorithm uses the action history and simplifies it before calculating the MP costs of each action.
> Simplification means that for example two movements of one organelle can be merged to one or placing and then moving an organelle can be simplified to one adding action.
>
> \*\*Related Issues\*\*
>
> Closes #1644
>
> \*\*Progress Checklist\*\*
>
> Note: before starting this checklist the issue should be marked as non-draft.
>
> \- \[x\] PR author has checked that this PR works as intended and doesn't
> break existing features:
> https://wiki.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/wiki/Testing\_Checklist
> (this is important as to not waste the time of Thrive team
> members reviewing this PR)
> \- \[x\] Initial code review passed
> \- \[\] Functionality is confirmed working by another person (see above checklist link)
> \- \[\] Final code review is passed and code conforms to the
> \[styleguide\](https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive/blob/master/doc/style\_guide.md).
>
> Before merging all CI jobs should finish on this PR without errors, if
> there are automatically detected style issues they should be fixed by
> the PR author.
(I’m hoping to dedicate time soon to do a full code review on that PR to get it in time for the next release)
Also, I’ve done minecraft mods in the past, well actually I made a few bukkit server plugins that I ran on my minecraft server that I had for a few years. Though, I didn’t get started with Java, I started with C++. Perhaps that’s the reason I actually kinda dislike Java, it feels pretty patronizing in comparison. C# is much nicer in having a lot of powerful syntax features that Java philosophy seems to be against as they don’t want to actually trust programmers to be competent.