# Ancient Web: Sean Barrett Kept Three Decades of Programming Notes on Nothings Sean Barrett's nothings.org preserves programming research, free C code, game-development essays, interactive fiction, and personal writing dating back to the early 1990s. 2026-10-12 :: Switchboard Tech Services ![Ancient Web: Sean Barrett Kept Three Decades of Programming Notes on Nothings](https://switchboardtechservices.com/static/images/defaults/articles.webp) Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). Sean Barrett's homepage is a strange combination of programmer's desk drawer, game-design notebook, and library of things he wrote because he wanted to see whether he could. [Visit nothings.org](https://nothings.org/). Barrett introduces himself as a programmer and lays out an extensive index. It includes downloadable C libraries, technical articles about data structures and graphics, early games and interactive fiction, film and music projects, mathematical amusements, and fiction written under deliberate constraints. One [1998 article](https://nothings.org/computer/iterate.html) studies why iterating a collection of simulated game objects can go wrong when objects delete one another. At first he presents loops that any C programmer would recognize. Then he changes the assumptions: what happens when the next object disappears, or removing one item moves another into an array slot the loop already passed? The answer takes many pages of examples, rather than a reassuring one-line rule. For anyone building game systems, the problem feels remarkably current. Other linked writing includes **1998 regular-expression searching**, **1999 Minesweeper tactics**, a 2000 note on OpenGL fog, and 2001 game reviews. That chronology shows the site as a place for publishing work in progress long before code hosting became the expected destination for every programmer's experiments. ## The homepage is an index of experiments Barrett's homepage links code that he explicitly offers to the public domain: image loading, TrueType font rasterization, Ogg Vorbis decoding, stretchy buffers, and other utilities. It also links essays explaining rendering methods and software interfaces, including [a technical examination of *Thief: The Dark Project*](https://nothings.org/). The surrounding nontechnical material refuses to follow a brand strategy. There are 1991 and 1993 writing experiments, a novel drafted in 2002, game-related jokes, and an interactive-fiction section. The website serves as a personal filing cabinet rather than a feed demanding constant attention. Its contents have been updated over many years, so it is not a frozen 1990s snapshot. Instead, it preserves old work within a long-lived structure, with dates that let visitors distinguish early notes from later reflections. That is the real historical value of [nothings.org](http://nothings.org): source code and technical arguments are kept close to the writing habits and curiosities of the person who made them. A useful algorithm can survive without its authorial context; here, the context is still linked from the front page. [Follow Barrett's original programming and writing index](https://nothings.org/). Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). - Categories: [Ancient Web](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/categories/ancient-web/) - Tags: [#ancientweb](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/ancientweb/), [#personalweb](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/personalweb/), [#freeware](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/freeware/), [#programming](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/programming/), [#gamedevelopment](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/gamedevelopment/) [Articles RSS](https://switchboardtechservices.com/feeds/articles.xml "Subscribe using an RSS reader") --- Canonical URL: https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-sean-barrett-kept-three-decades-of-programming-notes-on-nothings/ Language: en-us Content type: article Author: Switchboard Tech Services Published: 2026-10-12T16:39:34+00:00 Modified: 2026-10-18T21:04:28.073301+00:00