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Re: Limit Theory in the News

#334
JoshParnell wrote:Yep, love that he quoted Flat :clap:
Gave me a good laugh. But also kinda made me sad. Because it reminded me of what happened before at the long dark era. Seriously, I was so excited, when I saw that Josh posted again, but after I have read what he wrote...well, it made me think, to put it at least... :cry:

...but happily, the great Josh is back, and at what I can read from the article and the posts you make, you are on a really good (and maybe more important: healthy) way and development is making great progress. Keep up the good work and stay balanced. :mrgreen:
Automation engineer, lateral thinker, soldier, addicted to music, books and gaming.
Nothing to see here
Flatfingers wrote: 23.01.2017: "Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"
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Re: Limit Theory in the News

#335
Thanks Jan. It wasn't a great time but I think it was necessary for me to get to where I am today, both mentally and with development :) The past is the past. I'm happy that you guys stuck with me through it.

Also, we seem to be monopolizing the forums right now. Back to code I go :wave:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Limit Theory in the News

#336
JoshParnell wrote:Thanks Jan. It wasn't a great time but I think it was necessary for me to get to where I am today, both mentally and with development :)
I think there's a saying going "The past shapes the future", if you know what I mean. ;)

JoshParnell wrote: Also, we seem to be monopolizing the forums right now. Back to code I go :wave:
Yeah, kinda. Cya around. :mrgreen:
Automation engineer, lateral thinker, soldier, addicted to music, books and gaming.
Nothing to see here
Flatfingers wrote: 23.01.2017: "Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"
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Re: Limit Theory in the News

#338
I'm here after reading the article, which I just saw referenced in Josh's tweet.

Josh, I'm really proud of you for doing the interview for that story, which was thoughtfully and compassionately written. In my early 20s I also had run-ins with being lost in programming; I was nearly kicked out of college at one point. It is very easy for some people to lose their way in that world, where you can create anything as long as you are willing to give up all other aspects of life.

What is hard is to speak up about how seductive that lifestyle can become, and to talk plainly about the cost of getting in too deep. But maybe in talking about it, you might help others (including other indie game developers) choose to come back to sustainable lives.

You did well. Thank you.

Also, the next time I feel an urge to use poetic language, I just might have a bit of a re-think about that myself. :oops: I stand behind the thought -- perfectionism is dangerous and must be exposed and rejected -- but there were probably a few less aggressive ways that might have been said.

Memorable, though, apparently. :|
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Re: Limit Theory in the News

#339
Flatfingers wrote:
Memorable, though, apparently. :|
Yes, and Josh was the ultimate gentleman in taking it on board and I believe a bit of brutal honesty is fine at times.
Gz Flat, don't be embarrassed, you're famous now :)
JanB1 wrote:
Dinosawer wrote:
JanB1 wrote: That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it? :mrgreen:
Yes :mrgreen:
Knew it. This guy is legendary. :lol:
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
-=326.3827=-
Post

Re: Limit Theory in the News

#340
Gz Flat, don't be embarrassed, you're famous now :)
JanB1 wrote:
Dinosawer wrote:
JanB1 wrote: That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it? :mrgreen:
Yes :mrgreen:
Knew it. This guy is legendary. :lol:
[/quote]

Heh. Of course he is. How could one not like him. :D
Automation engineer, lateral thinker, soldier, addicted to music, books and gaming.
Nothing to see here
Flatfingers wrote: 23.01.2017: "Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"
Post

Re: Limit Theory in the News

#343
Flatfingers wrote:[..] It is very easy for some people to lose their way in that world, where you can create anything as long as you are willing to give up all other aspects of life.

What is hard is to speak up about how seductive that lifestyle can become, and to talk plainly about the cost of getting in too deep. [..]
perfectionism is dangerous and must be exposed [..]
Wait. Are we talking about a gamesindustry.biz article or about Tron? :ghost:
"omg such tech many efficiency WOW" ~ Josh Parnell
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Re: Limit Theory in the News

#344
Baile nam Fonn wrote:
Flatfingers wrote:[..] It is very easy for some people to lose their way in that world, where you can create anything as long as you are willing to give up all other aspects of life.

What is hard is to speak up about how seductive that lifestyle can become, and to talk plainly about the cost of getting in too deep. [..]
perfectionism is dangerous and must be exposed [..]
Wait. Are we talking about a gamesindustry.biz article or about Tron? :ghost:
Hmm...why not both?
Automation engineer, lateral thinker, soldier, addicted to music, books and gaming.
Nothing to see here
Flatfingers wrote: 23.01.2017: "Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"
Post

Re: Limit Theory in the News

#345
I've quoted part of this elsewhere, but Joseph Weizenbaum documented the "compulsion to code" over 40 years ago.

Here's a section of that part from Computer Power and Human Reason:
The computer programmer, however, is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. So, of course, is the designer of any game. But universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs. Moreover, and this is a crucial point, systems so formulated and elaborated act out their programmed scripts. They compliantly obey their laws and vividly exhibit their obedient behavior. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or a field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

One would have to be astonished if Lord Acton’s observation that power corrupts were not to apply in an environment in which omnipotence is so easily achievable. It does apply. And the corruption evoked by the computer programmer’s omnipotence manifests itself in a form that is instructive in a domain far larger than the immediate environment of the computer. To understand it, we will have to take a look at a mental disorder that, while actually very old, appears to have been transformed by the computer into a new genus: the compulsion to program.

Wherever computer centers have become established, that is to say, in countless places in the United States, as well as in virtually all other industrial regions of the world, bright, young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems to be as riveted as a gambler’s on the rolling dice. When not so transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed students of a cabalistic text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. But only for a few hours—then back to the console or the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. They exist, at least when so engaged, only through and for the computers. These are computer bums, compulsive programmers.

...

The psychological situation the compulsive programmer finds himself in while so engaged is strongly determined by two apparently opposing facts: first, he knows that he can make the computer do anything he wants it to do; and second, the computer constantly displays undeniable evidence of his failures to him. It reproaches him. There is no escaping this bind. The engineer can resign himself to the truth that there are some things he doesn’t know. But the programmer moves in a world entirely of his own making. The computer challenges his power, not his knowledge.

Indeed, the compulsive programmer’s excitement rises to its highest, most feverish pitch when he is on the trail of a most recalcitrant error, when everything ought to work but the computer nevertheless reproaches him by misbehaving in a number of mysterious, apparently unrelated ways. It is then that the system the programmer has himself created gives every evidence of having taken on a life of its own and, certainly, of having slipped from his control. This too is the point at which the idea that the computer can be “made to do anything” becomes most relevant and most soundly based in reality. For, under such circumstances, the misbehaving artifact is, in fact, the programmer’s own creation. Its very misbehavior can, as we have already said, be the consequence only of what the programmer himself has done. And what he has done he can presumably come to understand, to undo, and to redo to better serve his purpose.

...

It is a thrill to see a hitherto moribund program suddenly come back to life; there is no other way to say it. When some deep error has been found and repaired, any different portions of the program, which until then had given nothing but incomprehensible outputs, suddenly behave smoothly and deliver precisely the intended results. There is reason for the diagnostician to be pleased and, if the error was really deep inside the system, even proud.

But the compulsive programmer’s pride and elation are very brief. His success consists of his having shown the computer who its master is. And having demonstrated that he can make it to do this much, he immediately sets out to make it do even more. Thus the entire cycle begins again. He begins to “improve” his system, say, by making it run faster, or by adding “new features” to it, or by improving the ease with which data can be entered into it and gotten out of it.
Any of that sound familiar?

The power that the computer gives to create whatever world can be imagined, and to make it work right, has always been terribly seductive. This is why the Best Thing for these folks is a network of family and friends empowered to plant a figurative boot in the compulsive programmer's backside now and then -- go spend some time in the world outside the computer!

The code will still be there when you get back. :)

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