Filip Hráček / text
I've written a lot of articles over the years. Some of them are over at selfimproving.dev, others on Medium. Most of those are of a particular theme (software development and Flutter & Dart, respectively), and will stay where they are.
But for a long time, I wanted a place of my own on which to publish my articles. Not really a “blog”, as it’s really just static pages generated from Markdown files. But something close to that.
Here are the articles as of June 23, 2026:
- How I built a CLI poker game that you don’t need to install to play
A command-line poker game where you play against bots to train real-world skills. (JUNE 2026) - Playing classic Windows games from 1996-2006
How to set up a Windows XP gaming box (before all the hardware capable of running XP becomes too expensive). (MAY 2026) - The decline of video game golden ages
On featuritis in video game genres. (MAY 2026) - Say, isn’t it weird that the US spends so much effort to help the Prime Minister of a small European country get re-elected?
On neo-royalism. (APRIL 2026) - Supernormal stimulus
A concept I wish I had learned in high school. (APRIL 2026) - Nobody owes it to us for things to be obvious
The simple, helpful counter-argument to 'common sense' casual science denialism. (MARCH 2026) - The philosophical underpinnings of my giant mecha game
Notes for my Lektvar 2026 presentation. (MARCH 2026) - Bad game + scarcity = good times
My love of Ultima 8: Pagan versus overwhelming evidence (that it was a bad game). (MARCH 2026) - Using git worktree for A.I.-assisted coding
Agent workspaces go really well with git worktree. Here’s my current setup. (JANUARY 2026) - A techie’s guide to keeping young kids away from technology
Raising tech-savvy kids by limiting their early childhood access to technology. (JANUARY 2026) - Shove your AI features where the sun don’t shine
A diatribe. (DECEMBER 2025) - Making a tile-based game look like it’s not
Hide tiles from the player using these three weird gamedev tricks. (DECEMBER 2025) - Your science is not strong enough
On explaining things simply and the fake 'Albert Einstein' quote. (DECEMBER 2025) - A.I. is a printed birthday card train to Paris
In which I use a few short anecdotes to illuminate the Scylla and Charybdis that is A.I. (NOVEMBER 2025) - Making my 1970’s-style renderer multi-threaded
A tech deep dive into multi-threading in Flutter & Dart. (NOVEMBER 2025) - IfChange ThenChange
I miss Google’s LINT.IfChange. (NOVEMBER 2025) - I don’t think about «your tech» at all
Here’s what to do when someone on the internet says that some technology they’re not using 'is dead'. (NOVEMBER 2025) - How to playtest a video game
So you've been asked to playtest a game for a friend or a stranger. Here’s how to be the most helpful. (OCTOBER 2025) - The two types of open source
Let’s stop pretending that “without warranty” means “without expectation”. (MAY 2025) - The revenge of Server Side Includes (SSI)
How a technology from 1993 makes so much sense for today’s “Indie Small Web”. (MAY 2025) - “Math minus math” is wild
I love this self-published little book from 2009 full of abstract math-inspired graphic art. (FEBRUARY 2025) - Performance vs Preference
Why the C programming language won over Lisp, why QWERTY is winning over Dvorak, and why our favorite hyperfixations aren’t as successful as they “obviously” deserve. (JANUARY 2025) - Benchmarking Flutter, Flame, Unity and Godot
What happens when you decide to benchmark Flutter as if it was a 2D game development framework. (SEPTEMBER 2024) - Welcome to the superstar economy (you’re not going to like it)
It’s when “relatively small numbers of people earn enormous amounts of money and seem to dominate the fields in which they engage” (Sherwin Rosen, 1981). (JULY 2024) - Respectfully, socialism is a bad idea
I grew up in actual socialism, behind the Iron Curtain, and I find it a little bit worrying to see all these cool people promoting socialism these days. (JUNE 2024) - We need technology that is less immersive, not more
How come so many of the most talented engineers of our time work on making our entertainment more immersive? (JANUARY 2024) - (Personally) sustainable social media
How does one use social media without falling into its traps? (JANUARY 2024) - The engineering principles behind GIANT ROBOT GAME
How this weird game is being built. (AUGUST 2023) - Filip H. — Coworker’s Manual
How to deal with Filip. - Videogames that teach you stuff
Videogames like SimCity or Dwarf Fortress aren’t exactly “educational”, but they still teach you a lot. (AUGUST 2023) - Memex is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed
How to keep an external brain using ideas from 1945 and technology from 2023. (OCTOBER 2020)
Hope you enjoy at least some of them.
— Filip Hráček
Filip is a programming buff with formal training in journalism. He worked in Silicon Valley, now he’s based in Prague. He builds games, teaches programming, explains things, and creates silly software experiments.
His main project these days is GIANT ROBOT GAME (Steam link).
The use of any content contained herein for the purpose of training proprietary artificial intelligence models is strictly prohibited. Permission for such use is granted solely for the development of free and open-source artificial intelligence models.
