semitext

Having conversations about music with people is half the fun in my mind. It’s a creative medium so talking to people that have unexpected associations leads to lots of wonderful surprises in discovering new music. Also having context is also a huge part of deriving pleasure from a piece.

Algorithms that feed you stuff that all sounds similar is great if you need background music while you do chores or studying, etc. but for when you are listening to stuff more actively conversations with people is essential in my mind.

In a lot of computer games that use probability game developers will actually use pseudo-RNG, or other means to deceive players about what their actual chances are because otherwise the game will seem "unfair" to a segment of players.

I think there is a lot of truth to this, however I also (when I remember to) like to review notes I wrote a month or so later, and check to see if they make any sense to me. If they don't it means I didn't understand the concept as well as I thought I did and it is worth going back over the source material.

I'm a big fan of many Michael Brough games like Imbroglio, 868-HACK, and Cinco Paus because of how well he incorporates zugzwang into his designs. They always end up being these tiny, delightful challenges.

I think the fact that both outcomes are perceived as dangerous points to the real underlying problem which is that moderation of content is desirable, but not if it has an outsized influence. In other words, the scale of companies like Google, Facebook, etc. is itself a political problem rather than the moderation policy they choose.

Typically when you file anything that is going to trigger a new set of due dates for you based on the date of filing, so it is standard practice to file everything the day it is due, or perhaps the day before at most. That being said it is also standard practice to use docketing software to handle calculating due dates, it isn’t the sort of thing you would ever want to handle manually so I wonder how the screw up occurred.

While I don’t think it should be the only consideration when deciding on a language to use, I think there is something to the idea that you should use a language that makes you happy. I know a lot of people that use Go that really like using it.

I definitely appreciate any journalism that centers the people behind the things that make up our reality. This article is definitely a terrific example of what I like about this approach to writing.

TLDR is a pretty cool project that cuts out the verbosity of man pages.

https://tldr.sh/

Neat. I'm a self-taught developer, and I learned a lot by watching MIT computer science lectures on youtube while taking notes in a markdown file. But I definitely hit a wall when I tried to follow the Mathematics for Computer Science course. I didn't have a good way to handle the notation. Ultimately though I think if I ever decide to follow through with that I'll probably just write in a notebook and scan the documents so I can easily reference them. But I love the dedication to figuring this out!

My understanding is that the younger you are the easier it is to pick up a foreign language. Whereas that doesn't appear to be the case for computer languages. Learning either creates opportunities for life changing opportunities for the better, but I think it would be a mistake for people to forego learning a foreign language at that age. If they want to learn programming languages as well they will, but I know lots of people that regret not learning a 2nd language earlier in life.

As someone that tried making the switch to software development at your age two years ago, and haven't had any luck, I would treat the majority of advice you get here and anywhere else with a grain of salt. You will hear a lot of stuff about how you are not too old, and that it's okay to not have a CS degree. It's not that those things are wrong, but I think they are less true today than they were when many people here entered the field, at least in the Bay Area. If you are like me, you will find there are almost no jobs for jr/green developers, and you will find that when you do come across those jobs you won't fit the mental image most employers have of someone that would be appropriate fit for that position.

So my advice is keep learning (because that is the one thing about this field that is fun and exciting), but figure out how to do so in a way that is sustainable and makes you happy, and take care of your mental health.

Very cool. Are there any public repositories of puz files, or at least some sample puz file to test this out?

Employers don't want to hire jr engineers because they're too inexperienced, and are too liable to make mistakes. And employers also don't want to hire older engineers who are too expensive, and are less willing to work nonstop. Those are strong signals about what employers in general think of employees.

Unfortunately, barring some major unforeseen cultural and/or technological changes, I don't see those days coming back. The issue is that back in the late 80s/early 90s the cost of a new game was $60, and the cost of a new game today is... $60. That is, despite decades of inflation and an increased amount of development cost/time, that price point is stuck. I am not in the game dev industry, but I'm guessing they have loads of market research data explaining why that is that have to do with consumer psychology. While the industry is in a big growth phase that fixed price point isn't an issue because you make it up with an increased volume in sales. Now that the industry is more mature and saturated however, and so one response to the fact that $60 isn't what it used to be is micro-transactions, seasonal DLC passes, and anything else some suits can dream up to get a couple of extra bucks. The other response is indie game development, a back to basics approach where you make a game with a handful of people instead of 60+, and with a clever design and a lot of luck you can have a game that gets a lot of attention and do well for yourself even if your game only costs $30 or $15. Unfortunately, indie games are also saturated at this point, so standing out in the crowd gets harder and harder as time goes by.

The micro-transaction thing really is a sad turn of events though because it is not a content neutral change to games. Certain types of game mechanics are more amenable to to micro-transactions, and it creates an incentive to create artificial difficulty spikes in a game.

Thanks for sharing this. I'm switching careers, and I've lost count of how many rejections I've received at this point. Probably my highwater mark so far was getting to Google for an onsite interview. The day after I was so proud for getting there, and not completely bombing the interviews (i.e. I was always able to at least arrive at a solution for the problems, if not always an optimized one). But ultimately that wasn't good enough, and it is back to square one.

It is easy to say, "don't take it personally", but when you're starting from a non-traditional background, and therefore the amount of rejections you receive is probably higher than normal, it is really challenging not to let it get into your head and think maybe you're just not cut out for this line of work.

I also take issue with the idea that you should try something for a week, and if you don't like it, it's not for you. There are certain ctivities where your first week will be a poor representation of how much you enjoy an activity. I found the first couple of weeks of learning how to play a guitar miserable. That does not mean it was wrong for me to persevere, it meant that certain activities only become enjoyable once you reach a particular skill threshold. I can think of a lot of activities that work like that.

This is my experience working in offices like law firms that are filled with people that have limited technical aptitude for using software. Showing any sort of competency is a recipe for increasing your workload with no conferred benefits.

I am amazed this issue isn't raised more often. The majority of my headphone usage is in downtown San Francisco. Any wireless headphones will break up like every other second. For my purposes they are useless.