osmosisch

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Everything posted by osmosisch

  1. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    I would love to try 1-2 Switch but the price is just so off-putting for a goofy party game.
  2. DOTA 2

    This has been the best TI. I only halfheartedly decided to start watching near the end of group stage and ended up being gripped again by the amazing games. It helps that I've been a huge BigDaddy fan for basically all of his Dotes career. HoNtrash finally made it!
  3. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    Congratulations! Snipperclips and Overcooked are the most obvious ones that come to mind. The first to build relationships, the second to destroy them. I've also had quite a bit of fun with the wife/kids with Death Squared. One thing to bear in mind is that there's quite a few joycons out there with limited range so depending on the size of the screen you might have issues with how far people want to sit from it. Test this out in advance.
  4. Life

    Another great alternative that came to my mind later is this: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters You may not keep working in Haskell or similar functional programming but getting your mind around writing pure functions is going to pay off in huge dividends if you end up getting serious about programming. This actually hooks into what Erkki wrote above a little bit. I also came across these Python courses which seem pretty good to me: https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/cs101 https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/cs212 (I've especially heard good things about the second one, it discusses things like choices of data structure like Jenn is talking about) Anyway, because there's a metric shitton of nerds out there, and many of them have strong opinions plus the tools to put them into practice, there's about as many programming languages and paradigms out there as there's days in the week. I'd browse until you find something that suits you and then stick with that for a bit.
  5. Filmmaking

    I saw this tweet and thought of this thread:
  6. Dead Cells

    Double-dipped on the Switch because I was on holidays, and not regretted it for a second. The small screen makes some thing slightly hard to parse, but it's such a perfect pick up and play game. It really was great switching between Octopath and this. I've not really missed my unlocks, I'm actually kind of happy to be getting more little rewards again this way.
  7. Life

    This has been a cool discussion, sorry for not participating, took some much-needed holidays. Great post Erkki, though I'm not sure the meat of it is really for someone just starting out - it's extremely high-level. As far as certifications go I never really needed to do that, I'm old enough that programmers were mostly self-taught anyway. I guess my master's degree counts somewhat. I think the best approach, as said by others before, is to pick something and mess with it. Languages that have a REPL (Read Evaluate Print Loop) are the most fun to experiment with, like for example the Javascript console in any browser, or the BASIC prompt for that matter. Or the immediate visuality of NetLogo is also a really nice way to get your feet wet. For me the closest analogues to programming are 1) cooking and 2) writing, coming at it from opposite angles, but both focusing on communicating in a clear, unambiguous manner. In cooking, you have a set of instructions, ie. a program. You the cook are actually executing the program, taking the role of the computer. However, unlike a computer, you're not a deterministic system that always does exactly as instructed. In fact, you might even go off and improvise a new dish. Then, if you want to enable other people to replicate that dish, you need to write it down in a way that lets other people read your instructions, perform them, and hopefully arrive at the same delicious result. Writing a recipe is like programming someone else's brain. A recipe is like a program: you start with data (ingredients) and through instructions transform the data into the desired configuration. Some actions are repeated often enough that you give them a special name (functions) so for example you could say whisk(egg); saute(onion, 5, MINUTES) instead of expressly describing hand motions, pan temperature in degrees and the like. Good recipes are easy to follow and consistently produce the correct results. Similarly, when writing, either a text or a program, you are trying to essentially capture a chain of information and logic in a way that lets the (reader/computer) internalise what you've written with minimal friction and ambiguity. A well-written program is almost exactly like reading a (admittedly very dry) essay with footnotes. There's a great book about this, called Clean Code - see here for a blog post about it. Anyway, like Jon I'm always happy to help with specifics. Let me know!
  8. Life

    I did an artificial intelligence MSc (7 years) then did a theoretical biology Phd (5 years) then got a programming job on the side working on the desktop prototype of our current system, because the PhD stipend had run out but I wasn't quite finished yet. Then I bounced around a bit in the organisation until we got EU grant money to build our systems out into something much more ambitious, and then I basically stuck around while people moved on and now I'm in 'charge'. Nothing really goal-directed I'm afraid, I've always just kind of gone with the flow. Polish is absolutely bugnut weird and complicated, especially coming from a language like Dutch or English that has only vestigial cases and gendered nouns left. Not only is the vocabulary based on a completely different root (Slavic has little to do with Germanic or Latin), they also have a shit-ton of cases both for nouns and verbs, and they even go to the point that the verbs are gendered too, ie. when a woman speaks she changes her verb endings.
  9. Life

    I'm lead developer on the http://drugis.org software. It's pretty exciting times, we're seeing some uptake begin among companies. I'm happy that helped. I love trying to explain this crazy magic so please ask more if you want How cool to have a German speaker in Vietnam. I'd expect the majority foreign language there would stil lbe French from colonial times. In general I'd agree it's correct to be envious of the Dutch, haha. If only the people here were more willing to share some of the goodness. Oh well. None of our TV besides children's stuff is dubbed, which is generally given as a major reason behind people's uptake of especially English. In secondary school we had to take English, French and German for at least several years. I dropped French and German after year 4, but later got a very francophile girlfriend who took me on trips to France and the french-speaking parts of Canada which made me pick that back up. Besides that I also learned Latin and old Greek due to my school type. I've lost most of the Greek but the Latin really helped when trying to pick up more French, Italian and Spanish. Then I went and married a Polish woman and got kids so now I also speak Polish through osmosis, which is convenient because my in-laws don't speak anything else. Life's so interesting when you just kind of stay open to opportunities.
  10. Life

    I program for work these days, yes. It's been a bit of a winding road. I've not done much python myself, so I can't really speak to that. I started in BASIC on the Commodore 64, but these days like 75% of what I do is either straight-up JavaScript or compiles to it. If you like a lot of immediate visual feedback for your actions, I recommend NetLogo as a learning environment. I don't think it matters all that much, as long as, as you said, you get the core concepts right. Those are (as I see it): - variables: the places where you store data. In some languages you can modify such data after storing it, others don't allow that. Examples: 'x', 'boardgamesList' - instructions: what you tell the computer to do. Examples: 'x = boardgameList.length', 'boardgameList.add('Scrabble') - flow control: systems that let you execute instructions conditionally, or repeatedly. Examples: 'if x < 3 then x = x +1', 'forEach(boardgame in boardgameList) print(boardgame)' - functions: (usually named) sets of instructions that you can supply with some data, and which can output some data as well. Examples: 'function addOne(x) { return x + 1 }' , 'function Some languages let you actually treat functions as variables, so that you can 'store' actions and pass them around your program. Fundamentally, there is information, and there are various ways to act upon, and transform, that information. Everything else is window dressing. I've had to learn a lot of languages over the years, Dutch school is pretty heavy on that (more so when I went to school, English wasn't quite as ubiquitous then) and I'll say that learning each next one is easier than the previous one because you at some point start to see the similarities and differences and those make it easier to 'attach' concepts. On the other hand, you do get a lot of cross-contamination which can be annoying. Like I'll find myself retrieving Polish words when trying to speak French and vice versa. I absolutely suck at self-directed anything so I applaud people who are able to learn by themselves.
  11. Life

    As far as programming goes, for me the most productive way to think about it when learning was that I was learning wizardry. Arcane incantations that need to be performed just right, or they won't produce the desired results - but when you do get it right, you have just used words to effect real change. Viewing things through this lens made me keep at it, and is honestly still kind of correct in my view. I'm currently trying to gear up to teach my eldest daughter programming, or at least see if she's interested. It's been an interesting experience. If you're stuck or confused you should just ask here, I think. there's tons of helpful people around, and learning by oneself can be a lonely and inefficient experience. I'm sorry to hear it's hard to make friends in your current situation. I've only really done one big move in my life, and moved back closer to home after a year but definitely recognise the feeling. Having worked in academia, the transience of otherwise often really good connections was really sad. We've still got some friends we see maybe once a year out of it but it needs a ton of organising. Anyway, I hope things improve for you.
  12. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    I think the play there was to sell them on the steam marketplace instead of gemify them? That's what I always do, made me abour EUR50 over the years. It does add up. No clue what to do with gems.
  13. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    Woops. You two are kind of a two-headed entity in my mind. Sorry.
  14. The Big FPS Playthrough MISSION COMPLETE

    Congratulations, Ben. It's been quite the trip. Good show! I'm going to miss seeing this thread get updated.
  15. Plug your shit

    Pretty cool! I think some explanation of the rules would be nice, though maybe I just missed it. You'd probably also do well to make clickable overlays on your video for the store links.
  16. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    The tons of backtracking and so forth really suck, yes. Merus tipped me about a teleport earlier, that helps. I found the rest of the game/atmosphere good enough that it compensated for the drawback, and there was the occasional moment where the forced back-and-forth traversal led me to cool little discoveries or aha-moments where I figured out how whatever new skills I'd picked up would help me access something I'd missed earlier. I wrote more about it here: https://danielreid.github.io/ddgd/6/
  17. "Cars sucks." - A Pixar Thread

    It also didn't help that I came across and read this article while waiting for the movie to start.
  18. "Cars sucks." - A Pixar Thread

    The only thing I really liked about Incredibles 2 was the way that its first scene is just straight up the last one from the first film. The villain's motivation is stupid, their plan is stupid, none of the characters come off well and there's really nothing new or interesting in there. I guess it says a lot about me that I was most annoyed by the fact that they make much of a cool electric bike - only to have it make petrol engine sounds when it's driving around.
  19. Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

    I'm playing through it at the moment. It's extremely charming and is scratching the JRPG itch I get every couple of years. Don't expect anything earth-shattering, but there's enough interesting little tweaks with the boost system and the character's non-combat actions to keep me engaged.
  20. GOTFHOTY 2018

    I hated the look and feel of the previous God of War games, and this one really hooked me. Thread here: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/12011-god-of-war-and-a-little-bit-about-subjectivity-in-reviews/ There's still plenty of unexamined bullshit in there on reflection, and as always women get the short end of the stick narratively. But if you can overlook that, it's one of the most well-executed games I've played recently. Sometimes it's nice to just play something super-polished that oozes money. The acting performances are really impressive as well at times.
  21. What's the Name of the Game!?

    82: Ascendancy e: no that's not right after looking it up, but that's exactly how I remember Ascendancy looking. How funny.
  22. Just to add on, how cool is this:
  23. Terminal7 79: Something Terminal Alright

    Thanks for all the amazing thread titles. It's been wonderful seeing them pop up.
  24. Excellent news that Freehold is big enough to even need and afford this. Welcome! Unormal is one of my favourite game devs.
  25. Dying Light

    If this isn't fixed yet let me know I'll hook you up