2017.03.10
There is a natural order in which to write an interactive graphics program. My habit is to write the display routines first, since their behavior can be tested by watching the screen. Second, I write input routines and use input from the joystick or computer keyboard to drive the display routines. From this early stage onward, the programmer can test much of his new code in the role of a player of the game, manipulating the joystick and checking that the response on the display is as expected. This is much faster and more satisfying than traditional debugging methods which involve peering at columns of numbers. Computer game programs have a nice property: all bugs are visible. If you can't see, it's not important.Robinett is the developer of 2600 "Adventure" and the Apple II education game "Rocky's Boots"- this quote is from the unpublished manuscript Inventing Adventure. He touches on topics such as VR, procedurally generated content, and MMORPGs - not bad for 1983! Good reading before heading to Pax East and planning to see a panel on educational games.
EB, I find this piece on a new, gentler authoritarianism and the idea "Daddy understands what Junior thinks and feels: namely slighted." with the 5-question-quiz questions "is it more important to teach a kid kindness or respect" and "could you--with his permission--slap your dad in the face for a comedy skit"
Mind blown. Poured hot water sounds different than cold. The world is more complex than my physics high school class led me to believe. My question for you is- did you guess correctly, and was it easy? I overthunk it and got it wrong.
I think that this is the kind of nuance my mind is not well attuned to (which then feeds into my face blindness (or at least myopia))
My mind skim wants to skim everything, and go back to the bits that are difficult. It means I'm a rather uneven learner, capable of taking in vast quantities but being oblivious to some of the detail.
(But even that isn't consistent. According to some folks sometimes I do get hung up on word selection and nuance. I'd like to think I pay attention to how things interact (and all a word is is an interaction) and not what they statically and intrinsically are, but I'm not sure if that's a good assessment.)