Re: Limit Theory in the News
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:58 am
YesJanB1 wrote:That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it?Dinosawer wrote:Oh hey they quoted Flat
YesJanB1 wrote:That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it?Dinosawer wrote:Oh hey they quoted Flat
Knew it. This guy is legendary.Dinosawer wrote:YesJanB1 wrote:That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it?Dinosawer wrote:Oh hey they quoted Flat
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...JoshParnell wrote:Yep, love that he quoted Flat
I think there's a saying going "The past shapes the future", if you know what I mean.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
Yeah, kinda. Cya around.JoshParnell wrote: Also, we seem to be monopolizing the forums right now. Back to code I go
Yes, and Josh was the ultimate gentleman in taking it on board and I believe a bit of brutal honesty is fine at times.Flatfingers wrote:
Memorable, though, apparently.
JanB1 wrote:Knew it. This guy is legendary.Dinosawer wrote:YesJanB1 wrote: That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it?
[/quote]JanB1 wrote:Knew it. This guy is legendary.Dinosawer wrote:YesJanB1 wrote: That was the member who said ""Show me the smoldering corpse of Perfectionist Josh"", wasn't it?
Extremely.Flatfingers wrote:Memorable, though, apparently.
Indeed. Never forget!Talvieno wrote:Extremely.Flatfingers wrote:Memorable, though, apparently.
Wait. Are we talking about a gamesindustry.biz article or about Tron?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 [..]
Hmm...why not both?Baile nam Fonn wrote:Wait. Are we talking about a gamesindustry.biz article or about Tron?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 [..]
Any of that sound familiar?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.