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Idle Thumbs 76: The Three Antidotes

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Anecdote 4.

Idle Thumbs 76: The Three Antidotes

Neon lights flash. Boxes and controllers of games gone unplayed tumble off of your clumsy finger-tips. Turn by turn your affliction goes unchecked and games go unplayed. Before it all goes black Lao Che slams something down on to a table. "What's that?" you ask. "The anecdote Dr. Jones" "To what?" He laughs aloud. "Video games."

Games Discussed: XCOM Enemy Unknown, FTL: Faster Than Light, The Binding of Isaac, Katamari Damacy, Minecraft, Quake 3: Arena, Dark Souls

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Giant Bomb is starting to become the bizarro world crew of Idle Thumbs ala that Seinfeld Episode.

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Only partially through, but I have to say that I fucking love these anecdotes and the music and the paced way Sean says them. It's like you dropped a bizarro chunk of The Memory Palace into Idle Thumbs and it WORKS.

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I'm also only part way through. I disagree with the assertions about programmers' skills somehow being more quantifiable that others. Granted, I can't speak for programmers working in the game industry, but I can't imagine it's much different than other industries. Schools don't pump-out cookie-cutter programmers. In fact, most of what you learn in college is rubbish that does not make you great at real-world programming. It's difficult to find people who are genuinely good at it, or have the potential to be, ask any recruiter. Furthermore, the state of the code bases even at prominent tech companies is shockingly bad. I'm not doing a great job expressing my point, but it's essentially that schools don't train programmers well, there is a huge range of competencies, and truly skilled programmers are in short supply.

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I'm also only part way through. I disagree with the assertions about programmers' skills somehow being more quantifiable that others. Granted, I can't speak for programmers working in the game industry, but I can't imagine it's much different than other industries. Schools don't pump-out cookie-cutter programmers. In fact, most of what you learn in college is rubbish that does not make you great at real-world programming. It's difficult to find people who are genuinely good at it, or have the potential to be, ask any recruiter. Furthermore, the state of the code bases even at prominent tech companies is shockingly bad. I'm not doing a great job expressing my point, but it's essentially that schools don't train programmers well, there is a huge range of competencies, and truly skilled programmers are in short supply.

Sure, but what I more meant is that if you are a good programmer, you can absolutely get a job because people will recognize it and they need them. I didn't mean there was a glut of great programmers. I kind of meant the opposite of that--they are always in high demand because there aren't enough.

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In that second anecdote I thought Chris was going to break out with more intense guitar as the story continued but it just stopped.

Edit - I would buy that Scoops shirt. Any of the ones described.

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Sure, but what I more meant is that if you are a good programmer, you can absolutely get a job because people will recognize it and they need them. I didn't mean there was a glut of great programmers. I kind of meant the opposite of that--they are always in high demand because there aren't enough.

Ah, in that case, I agree.

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Hey guys--when we first uploaded this it was missing some content, which we didn't realize until it was already up. If the version you have is shorter than 1:22:26, you should redownload it so you have the full thing.

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I'm also only part way through. I disagree with the assertions about programmers' skills somehow being more quantifiable that others. Granted, I can't speak for programmers working in the game industry, but I can't imagine it's much different than other industries. Schools don't pump-out cookie-cutter programmers. In fact, most of what you learn in college is rubbish that does not make you great at real-world programming. It's difficult to find people who are genuinely good at it, or have the potential to be, ask any recruiter. Furthermore, the state of the code bases even at prominent tech companies is shockingly bad. I'm not doing a great job expressing my point, but it's essentially that schools don't train programmers well, there is a huge range of competencies, and truly skilled programmers are in short supply.

Schools shouldn't churn out programmers. Learning to write code is easy. Being able to write proper code is way more difficult. Being able to properly develop software is very difficult. You cannot teach people to be good programmers. It takes time and investment from the wanna be programmer. Most good programmers were initially self thought, and eventually moved on to education in the computer science/programming field/direction. So yeah, it is difficult to find good programmers. They especially make it difficult to find them when you're not willing to pay for them. Why would you offer a good payment for a good programmer, because anyone could learn to program. Right? That appears to be the train of thought.

But there's the essential problem. Developing software is as much about programming as surgery is about being able to wield a scalpel and sow flesh. "Butchers" are easy to come by, but companies want surgeons for butcher salaries.

I'm not suggesting you shouldn't hire directly out of college. Because college has nothing to do with it, it's was just the formal education. The person might have had a lot of informal education. So you could get a "fresh" good programmer. Programming tests a lot of companies perform during hiring rounds are bullshit. They can help to disqualify the poor programmers. But it doesn't help you in finding good programmers. Most programming tests are simply, tedious, questions that usually have a good/false result. It's not interesting to know if a programmer can write a quicksort, or some other algorithmic problem. Proper questions should be a vague problem that has to be solved where there is no good or false answer. Its about the path the programmer takes to solve this problem. Because eventually it is a team that develops the software. The team will probably have a member that could optimize/re-engineer the shitty algorithm when it is needed. But if you problem solution is shit to begin with you cannot fix that easily.

The state of code bases is a different story. There are many factors that are the cause of this. Most prominently, half way through building your skyscraper they're requesting redesigns. But it's a bit useless to talk about this. Much has been written about this subject and also a long time ago (for example: The Mythical Man-Month 37 years years ago) and little has been done about it.

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Aw, I listened to an incomplete podcast! I noticed at some point in the first ~20 minutes Chris cut out in mid-sentence and suddenly Sean was on another topic.

This podcast actually got me to start playing a demo of a game I still have not bought. I play The Binding of Isaac demo on Newgrounds almost nightly. I'll beat the first boss, get frustrated by the keyboard controls and Flash lag, die, and quit. I go to bed angry!

The demo does not seem to be updated with Wrath of the Lamb content, so I wonder if this is a good time capsule version of the game to go back to for veteran players, similar to how Jake mentioned Team Fortress 2 is now nothing like original Orange Box TF2. Which you can rediscover by playing it on XBox 360!

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elmuerte, everything you said is true. I shudder when I think back on the code that I wrote fresh out of college. I was fortunate enough to work with some good developers early on who taught me a lot. I fully support hiring un-experienced people out of college, but you must invest heavily in them to grow good development practices. That said, it's often easier than working with an experienced developer who has entrenched bad habits. The last company that I interviewed at, and was hired by, was also into those worthless puzzlers and quicksort type questions. The only way I know of accurately evaluating someone is to sit down and write something non-gimmicky with them. Ironically, at this company, after 6 hours of interviews I wasn't allowed to touch a keyboard once. The mind boggles.

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Whatever you do, somebody remember to bug Sean to post his GDC talk after he does the real one to the blog. I am on tenterhooks waiting.

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Seriously, what's up with Chris pronouncing Quixotic as "kwicks-otic"? I remember back when he just made fun of people for mispronouncing segue and Moog. Is that pronunciation a meme that I missed?

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I'm glad that there was some mention of the offputting part of the XCOM demo, I thought maybe I was alone on that. The singular pathed tutorial was poor (I've heard it might be skippable in the final release), but I've heard enough about the rest of the game that it hasn't impacted my opinion of the game. The way the map and encounters occured in the 2nd mission (I did the Kansas City one) felt poor to me too. Super linear map, 3 groups of aliens seemingly just waiting for you to encounter them to cutscene aggro. It was missing a lot of the mystery and foreboding I felt in a large area in X-Com. I really would've preferred to have one large map to mess around in, but I feel like this was a demo designed for making the sale to those who weren't already on board, rather than providing a true taste to someone who's already invested in seeing the full game.

I did really enjoy the design and Command and Conquer style characters-talking-to-you-as-the-commander dialogue though. Can't wait to actually play the real game.

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Seriously, what's up with Chris pronouncing Quixotic as "kwicks-otic"? I remember back when he just made fun of people for mispronouncing segue and Moog. Is that pronunciation a meme that I missed?

How do you pronounce it? I'm pretty sure that's the right way.

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I reckon I stand corrected, but it seems peculiar that the pronunciation would be so thoroughly separated from its roots. I figured its pronunciation goes more like kee-HO-tik (IPA: ki:ˈhoʊtik) to match the root, Don Quixote, and I've never heard it said any other way before.

Seriously though, how did it get that pronunciation?

EDIT: Turns out the short answer is that quixotic was part of the English language so long that it basically predated the notion of correctly pronouncing Spanish words.

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I reckon I stand corrected, but it seems peculiar that the pronunciation would be so thoroughly separated from its roots. I figured its pronunciation goes more like kee-HO-tik (IPA: ki:ˈhoʊtik) to match the root, Don Quixote, and I've never heard it said any other way before.

Seriously though, how did it get that pronunciation?

EDIT: Turns out the short answer is that quixotic was part of the English language so long that it basically predated the notion of correctly pronouncing Spanish words.

I love that it's pronounced that way. It suggests to me an archetype that is so deeply woven into the public consciousness that it simply adapts to fit the conventions of its host language, rather than maintaining an element of exoticism.

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As a fan of both podcasts, I say that Patrick Klepek should drop hot scoops, and let Steve Gaynor have it.

This assumes Steve wants Scoops. Doesn't he hate this sorta thing?

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Patrick's held it for a while, but I think it'd be a big relief and things would be a lot less tense if he just let go.

After so long, I don't even know if Steve wants it to fall back on him (I'd personally like to see that) but it definately seems confusing and wrong to pick up Hot Scoops just because nobody's using it. On that I think we can all agree.

Things are gonna get more and more confusing the more we throw Hot Scoops around like this.

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The reason we found out Patrick goes by Scoops is because someone saw "Scoops" in FTL and thought it was Patrick, but it was actually the name Steve chose for his character in that game--so I think we can assume Steve is down with Scoops.

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