Can't say I have always loved mathematics. Especially in high school, where I treated math classes as an hour of meditation, looking out of the window, my thoughts elsewhere, usually listening to music. I never liked the forced labor of doing the same kind of calculations over and over again. I couldn't be bored more.

However, during the doing of this project, I rediscovered my fascination for mathematics, despite I thought it to be professionally crushed in school.

Mathematics seems boring, plain and straightforward at first, but if you look further, you discover how enchanting and mysterious it can be. The Mandelbrot set is a very good example for this, because it shows - quite literally - what magic patterns are hidden behind simple calculations, that you can unveil thanks to the power of the computer.

About fract-ol

The goal of this école 42 project is to create your own visualization of the Mandelbrot set and the Julia set. For this you are given the MiniLibX library, which is a custom made library provided by 42, offering you (supposedly) simple function calls for things such as creating a new program window, as well as drawing pictures to it, that you can manipulate pixel by pixel.

What I learned

By doing this project I got an experience on how it is to make a graphical application by using a library. I also got an experience in writing code that has many iterations. It felt great and powerful! Also, the first time that the Mandelbrot set appeared on the screen was a moment of disbelief and awe.

Code

Please have a look at the project yourself. It is one of the more interesting ones if you have no experience in coding or programming. There are instructions if you follow the link!

Do you have feedback? Let me know!