ChaosKit is a piece of software that generates pictures of fractals (or rather fractal flames). The project started sometime before 2010 — at least that's the year on the oldest file I had lying around.
Since I'm typing this in November 2024, it's clear that a lot of time has passed since then. This repository is meant to document the journey from the beginning to the last version of ChaosKit. There's heaps of bad code, cringeworthy file names and also some nice pictures alongside bad ones. Enjoy!
I wrote and rewrote the project from scratch a lot of times. Most times I also took it as an opportunity to learn or play with another programming language. This is reflected in the directory structure of this repo.
Each directory in the top level of the repository is one prototype. Inside, there's usually:
- the code (if I still have it, there might be also a link to the repo in the README)
- maybe a README file
- an
outputsdirectory with pictures and output files from the program
Here are some words about the actual prototypes:
01-ruby/— My first and jankiest implementation <302-delphi— Rewrite in Delphi (AKA Object Pascal) because I wanted more speed03-java- Rewrite in Java with Swing because I wanted it to be cross-platform04-cpp- Rewrite in C++ with GTK+2 after convincing @strzkrzysiek to turn it into a university project05-coffeescript— Rewrite in CoffeeScript with a pivot into implementing fractal flames, after I noticed similarities between them and my old approaches06-rust— Rewrite in Rust for more speed, again07-cpp-opencl— Rewrite in C++ with OpenGL, OpenCL and Dear ImGui to experiment with generating on the GPU08-cpp-qt— Rewrite in Qt/QML to turn this into a full-fledged editor with a nice UI
Aside from a few exceptions that I'm very grateful for, for most of the time I've been chipping away at ChaosKit alone. Every now and then I found new, exciting ways for taking the project in new directions — new ways of coloring! computing on GPU! turning it into a freaking code interpreter! That all kept me going.
But then, every time I hit an issue, I spent lots of late evenings trying to solve it, searching all over the internet. I spent lots of time rewriting the same parts over and over from one version to another (don't get me started on OpenGL boilerplate). The project became daunting from all the scope creep. I wasn't getting any motivation or fun from it anymore. So, one day in 2021, I decided to stop.
I wasn't thinking about ChaosKit since then. Well, I wasn't until I recently watched Lu Wilson's talk "What it means to be open". That talk made me start reflecting on this entire journey and how it's been the opposite of open. I realized that in reality, I was afraid of sharing ChaosKit, of all the potential criticism I could get. I was afraid that I couldn't handle it.
I don't want to be afraid anymore.
So, here it is, a big, scrappy dump of stuff that's very much not perfect. This thing taught me a lot and I hope you enjoy it. But beware, there are gaps the size of Jupiter!
Feel free to ask questions, I'm happy to answer.
- Fediverse/Mastodon: @[email protected]
- Matrix: @evol:evolved.systems
Unless mentioned otherwise:
- All the software (code and binaries) is licensed under the 2-Clause BSD License.
- All the images and outputs are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.