Fabien LE LEZ wrote:
>
> Hey, why not make another set of weightings?
> Like, "What's the best drink to have when programming?"
Many axes to consider:
- whether it increases or decreases my alertness
- whether I enjoy it
- what it costs. A non-trivial concern when you're broke!
- whether repeated doses will hurt my stomach
- whether it keeps me awake, and whether I want that
- being put to sleep is always a misfeature. Coding is boring enough
as is!
- whether it relieves me of work. Valid in a corporate context.
Semi-relevant at home, if my brain is fried.
- how long it takes to obtain. See the previous point.
This evening I select FRUIT COCKTAIL as my ideal beverage. Because I
happen to have a small can of it, and it has a syrupy liquid that's not
too sweet. My other options are spartan: water, tea (hurts my stomach
when done to much), heavily sugared tea (ditto), heavily sugared water
(what you do when you can't buy juice!)
Kudos to FRUIT COCKTAIL, the champion beverage of the uber-geek!
Consider it a bletcherous hack.
Um, I'm syruped out. Switching to WATER, to be followed later by
HEAVILY SUGARED WATER.
Have you ever realized that if you're the type of person who dumps a
gazillion pounds of sugar into your coffee or tea, that that's almost
all of what you're tasting? The coffee beans or tea leaves become a
pretty minor factor in the experience. This I discovered a few nights
ago, necessity being the motherf***er of invention.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
P.S. Never use high quality olive oil for Noodle Roni.
On 28 Aug 2006 22:07:48 -0700, "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com>:
> Coding is boring enough as is!
You might have a problem if you think that.
Not enough macros maybe?
After all, coding is the way to make the computer do boring activities
by itself.
Fabien LE LEZ wrote:
> On 28 Aug 2006 22:07:48 -0700, "Mallor" <···········@gmail.com>:
>
> > Um, I'm syruped out. Switching to WATER, to be followed later by
> > HEAVILY SUGARED WATER.
When a food bank awards you a bag of key limes, it is like gold.
Tonight's ideal programming beverage is MILDLY SUGARED LIMEWATER. Good
stuff! This ranks right up there with inventing my own salad dressings
from herbs, oil, vinegar, and soy sauce.
> > Coding is boring enough as is!
>
> You might have a problem if you think that.
> Not enough macros maybe?
>
> After all, coding is the way to make the computer do boring activities
> by itself.
But you still have to do that boring activity the 1st time around. If
you've got many such boring activities you need to implement to get to
some higher goal, then macros are not gonna save you. They may extend
your reach of what you can accomplish, but you will still be bored.
You'll just get farther before giving up.
*Enjoyment* would be based on an interesting activity to start with. I
hope that someday, I'll be enjoying a bunch of compiled game AI
scripts.
Also I may enjoy the genesis of 3D procedural content, but I think it's
going to take a lot longer to enjoy that. The basis of such content
(in the RISC sense of "basis") is not clear to me. Possibly it could
be any old chunk of 3D stuff, so as a programmer-artist, I am left with
a blank canvas and too many degrees of freedom. I don't know where it
will lead. Although, the driving problem is to create visually
appealing stuff *quickly*, so that the production cost of visual art in
gamedom is driven way down. I think if I achieve this, it'll be
enjoyable.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
On 31 Aug 2006 00:22:32 -0700, "Mallor" wrote:
>> After all, coding is the way to make the computer do boring activities
>> by itself.
>
>But you still have to do that boring activity the 1st time around. If
>you've got many such boring activities you need to implement to get to
>some higher goal, then macros are not gonna save you.
There's a video game I really like, called Farcry. Basically, you have
to go from one point to another, sometimes transporting a object, and
avoiding being killed by mercenaries -- either by killing them before
they kill you, or by not being noticed.
The nice thing about this game is that there are different ways to do
each mission. So, when I'm bored, I start a mission, and I say "Right,
let's find an original way to do it."
When programming, it's the same: if the usual way of doing things
bores you, just find another way. It's an opportunity to learn
something new, and the actual program you have to make is just an
application exercise.