C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I have now worked for one month at the best job I have ever had. I have never seen a software development environment so supportive of learning, and so well-disciplined in following responsible practices.

Almost all day, every day, we sit with a colleague and code as a team.

We write a test for a piece of functionality before we write the code to implement it.

We use a continuous integration server which turns a screen very visibly red and alerts our chat channels whenever someone commits code that breaks the build. We call a stop to all work until it's fixed, so the project is always functional.

We review new code with a pull request, then merge it directly into master-- and we delete every branch within two or three days of creating it.

We take seriously the feedback generated at retrospective meetings, with specific action items and deadlines which we all follow up on.

Instead of just adding more features, we keep a list of tasks to restructure the whole codebase, to make it easier and faster to add features-- and we are allocated official time to work on that.

And best of all, we only work forty hours a week, which prevents the errors that would result from exhaustion.

Does all this put us behind schedule? No. All of it makes our process faster in the long run.

I wish I were exaggerating when I say the objective of the Neoreactionary movement is the reversal of democracy and human rights, and an intention to install a monarch CEO over America. Alas, that is how they describe their stance in their own words.

Recently, the most famous Neoreactionary thought-leader (one of the founders of the movement) was scheduled to speak about technology at a major software conference. When his detractors pointed out the content of his online writings to the conference organizers, the conference decided to un-invite him.

A flood of complaints emerged about persecution of the right wing by the left. Can Neoreactionaries really be called "right wing"? And if you're right wing, do you really want that connection? This is one of a series of distinctions which the complaints repeatedly conflate (including "They are no longer inviting him to speak" conflated with "They banned him").

Do you see the gulf between "right of center" and "James Bond villain"? At least "right" and "left" are dimensions on a political continuum-- the same perhaps cannot be said of overt advocacy for world domination. So if you ask "Is it wrong to un-invite a speaker from a convention for political views", that is the wrong question for this situation. Is establishing a dictator really politics? Extolling the Middle Ages is so far outside the Overton Window that it is not politics.

Scott Alexander wrote "The Anti-NeoReactionary FAQ". While describing this scenario on his blog, even he expressed concerns over removing speakers who are "insufficiently leftist".

The uninvited Neoreactionary speaker once blogged as follows:

As the King begins the transition from democracy, however, he sees at once that many Californians – certainly millions – are financial liabilities. These are unproductive citizens. Their place on the balance sheet is on the right. To put it crudely, a ten-cent bullet in the nape of each neck would send California’s market capitalization soaring – often by a cool million per neck.

That's only "insufficiently leftist" if the Pope is "insufficiently Satanist". No, scratch that. It's not even the opposite of leftist.

Consider another case; this case is of another software developer who invented an innovative new file system. He would be giving talks on it right now, were he not in prison for the murder of his wife. Would you look forward to sitting in an audience, listening to him on a stage with a microphone? If you weigh his dead wife and her family on one hand, and your enjoyment of file systems on the other, and if you have a sense of proportion, your answer is "no".

Your lack of desire to hear him talk will not bring his wife back, so what's really behind it? To give a stage and a microphone to a person is to communicate that you honor a person. That person must, at the very least, be bare-minimum honorable in public life. Are you "politicizing" the conference in this case? No.

If that's not politics, why is the original case of the Neoreactionary one of politicization of the software conference? When a Neoreactionary says he wants feudalism, this is not like when some leftists call America "feudal" and its citizens "serfs". In light of conditions in North Korea, we recognize that is hyperbolic rhetoric. Well, the Neoreactionary openly wants a return to non-rhetorical feudalism, in which you would be a non-rhetorical serf. When publicly pondering whether millions of Californians should be shot in the back of the head, he finds this concept troubling, but does not reject it out of hand. I am not blowing his views out of proportion for hyperbolic effect. You have a first-amendment right of freedom of association, which includes not associating with this person. His freedom of speech doesn't include the right to a megaphone.

Only with a complete lack of perspective is it possible to characterize the conference's decision as having anything to do with politics. If you would like to wring your hands over your uncertainty over where the line is drawn, this incident is not your test case. This software conference is so far from the slippery slope, they can't see it with a telescope.

Over the years, I came to realize that my best work has always involved subjects that interested me, or -- even better -- subjects about which I've become interested, and even passionate about, through the very process of doing design work. I believe I'm still passionate about graphic design. But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing a good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inexcapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be
--Michael Beirut, "Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content" from Seventy-Nine Short Essays On Design.

There is just an astonishing quantity of paying work out there for projects that try to get people to buy things, and there is almost nothing I want to buy. I don't want to kindle a desire to buy more things. I don't want kindle that desire in others.

I have focused my design efforts on non-marketing pieces: magazines, maps, information guides, books, games, illustrations. I enjoy doing that-- particularly for topics that interest me. I am known for boundless, passionate enthusiasm. I don't know how to generate enthusiasm. Certainly not in exchange for money. I'm not sure I could live with myself if I did.

On the other hand, I think a lot of programming consists of making a product. That product is what you are selling. It is your business-- not a dozen different businesses a year. Someone uses that product. Corporate software, unfortunately, is chosen and paid for by someone who doesn't have to use it, and that's why it sucks. I hope very much to work on something that is chosen and paid for by the person who uses it. I want to make something the user wants.

I daydreamed about this system for years, and now I get to watch it.

World Builder from BranitVFX on Vimeo.

In preparation for moving an apartment into a single room, I have been modeling the room and its proposed contents in Sketchup. As you can see, I modeled the possessions with rather more detail than was strictly required. No doubt I will continue to do so until there is some kind of addiction intervention.

Jen did not expect that I would increase the verisimilitude any farther. But oh, how incorrect that was. I did not like the stock human figure that comes with Sketchup.

From Untitled Album

This virtual reality may have ripped the fabric of space and time, and several other fabrics as well.

I walked into the first class of Intro To Java and it was totally quiet. I sat down and the guy behind me asked me, "Hey, why do people learn Java?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, why are you taking it?"

"To learn programming. It was that or take C++. Then I'll teach myself Ruby and Python."

"So, like Javascript? Javascript is a subset of Java?"

"No, they really shouldn't have named them alike."

"But Javascript's embedded in all the browsers."

"Yeah, it's like a monopoly so we have to put up with it."

"But Java ... what do people choose Java for?"

"The answer to that depends on as opposed to what."

"Like, what is Java good for?"

"The corporate world developed it so they trust it. Also it runs on different hardware platforms."

Now it has gone back to complete silence. The teacher hasn't started, so I'm blogging.

I've been making a miniature toy Penguicon. You can run around in it and interact with artificially-intelligent miniature versions of people you might recognize. It's a shame Randy Milholland of "Something Positive" isn't returning this year--- had I made one for last year's Penguicon, it would have included something like this:

> GIVE FANFIC TO RANDY

You hand the crumpled sheaf to Randy Milholland. His eyes, as they traverse the lines, lose their light by progressive stages. Finally he slumps into the sofa. "I've lost my will to live," he says.

Rippy the Razor Blade walks into the Consuite.

> EXAMINE RANDY'S WILL TO LIVE

It's no longer here, it's lost. Maybe you can find it.

The sort of game you can play using an interpreter program like WinPlotz used to be called a "text adventure". Occasionally the word "storygame" tries to get traction and fails. The term of art has come to be "interactive fiction". The difficulty in naming results from so many simultaneous categories: programmers call it a simulator parser or a conversational interface, authors call it narrative prose, and gamers call it a puzzle game. Just as in the blind descriptions of Rudyard Kipling's elephant, they are all correct.

This project is experiencing feature creep like mad. I'm using it for a learning experience, and the more I discover the InForm system can do, the more I build in. It now simulates the player's mental and physical condition along several dimensions. I'm actually toying with the idea of having the game ask you for your LJ username, and building a programming track from your interests list, so you can plan out how to maximize your "fun" points score as the weekend goes by. I'm also realizing how many games Andy Looney has designed which you could play against him in the game room.

But no, this thing has to get out the door some time. I'm not going to program in every flower planter in the lobby. Building the hotel convention center and its contents is mostly finished, but the markup has run to the thousands of words. This is to say nothing of the pseudocode that scripts the behaviors, events, and puzzle mechanisms.

This is so fun, I think I need to find an organization for Interactive Fiction and see if I can get on the Board of Directors or something. Yeah, I'm that excited about it.

Let me tell you a bit about user interfaces as it relates to Interactive Fiction. An interesting thing happens when people get really good at writing text adventures. They're trying to manage the state of your knowledge: not too much too soon, not too little too late, see? Because it's a puzzle. Also they're trying to motivate you, carefully adjust to your expectations, respond to your constant errors, and put you at precisely the right frustration level, see? Because it's a game. They're also trying to predict and manage how you feel about it, see? Because it's a literary drama with a plot, setting, and characters.

All of those things involve them modeling the human, not modeling the computer system.

And what happens -- aha! -- when such people are also programmers? Not just any programmers, but programmers in the area of natural language interface. What happens when the best of them get together and program a development environment and framework, and then design the user interface for it, and then write debugging error messages and step-by-step documentation for it?

You get software that seems to read your mind, that's what. InForm 7 (available free for Windows, Mac and Linux) has the most kickass debugging error messages and step-by-step documentation I've ever seen.

My Linux box is still set up to the resolution or refresh rate of that monitor which burned out last week. On every other monitor I use it with, it looks fine through the booting phase showing the Ubuntu logo above a scrolling list of things that are happening. But just when it is about to get to the desktop, the image shuts off and is replaced with the words "OUT OF SYNC".( Read more... )

I'm off work today on medical leave, and working on the Penguicon program book. I use my Ubuntu Linux desktop computer for web browsing, instant messages, music-- everything but games and graphic design software. I dropped the folder "My Music" into Totem Music Player so that it would queue up all the music files in my entire collection to play for me randomly while I lie in bed recuperating and working on the program book on a laptop. I liked one song in particular and went to find it in my filesystem. It was nowhere to be found by browsing, but turned up with the "Find File" feature:
( Screenshot behind the cut. )I right clicked it and chose "Open Containing Folder":
( Screenshot behind the cut. )It's contained in home: Music: Soundtracks: Ghost In The Shell. So I clicked the Soundtracks folder.
( Screenshot behind the cut. )The Ghost In The Shell folder is not visible in the folder that the computer says it's in. Why?

camgusmis had some great thoughts on the xartum development messageboard.

It looks like spell casting would almost always involve the Perl programming language, whereas altering the world with Lojban is then the equivalent of prayer because it requires somebody to implement it in Perl ... or it's the equivalent of incanting familiars to do one's bidding, depending on how one feels about transcendent artificial intelligences who have breached a toposophic boundary.

It also makes me chuckle to imagine characters in the game entreating specific real-world Perl programmers by name in their prayers (or grimoires, if the Perl programmer is a BOFH). We can pretend that one of the transcended beings used to be Nat Torkington or somebody. But he is certainly no demonic familiar. He's more like a trickster god, I think.

One of the neatest things about xartum is that I might actually have a purpose toward which to put programming skills. We have the idea of creating a School For Magic located in xartum, in which those players who know Perl will teach rudimentary ways to interact with the game database to those of us who don't. Classes will be held in character, and almost entirely in Lojban.

I like the idea of game rules that are code. If someone finds a loophole, we should take a page from the story of "cheating Death" in "Lessons from Lucasfilm's Habitat" and not violate the world model. The gods should allow the mortal to keep whatever result he/she get from it, and then patch the code to prevent further exploit.

The niftiness of xartum is increasing by mathematical factors.