Coffee Is Hard • Hacker News Board

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#101

Post by manifestsilence » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

monktastic1 wrote: post #16

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that. "Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfuln…

Yes! There's a quote that resonated with me:

"Some people do the dishes to make them clean. Some people do the dishes to do the dishes."

Valuing the experience that is happening, whatever it may be, has power.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#102

Post by manifestsilence » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

drankula3 wrote: post #21

whatshisface wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like JavaScript to me. Yes, these games are usually coded in scripting languages like JS or Python, even back in the day they were programmed in custom scripting languages running on the engines of yore. Finally, yes, these kinds of games are a great way to learn programming because they map very well on to basic control flow constructs (if, else, while) and don't usually require additional computer science…

For python, check out pygame. It's outdated and only works with 2.7, but I think it can be installed with apt on Ubuntu and will teach the basics like rendering loops, frames, etc.

Pygame is still alive and great. It even has built-in support for game controllers, and nice stuff for managing sound effects.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#103

Post by bbojan » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

The French have a term for this - vie quotidienne.

Literal translation would be "everyday life", but the French term has an aspect of positivity in it that I don't think carries over to the English version.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#104

Post by mistersquid » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

lacampbell wrote: post #95

davinic wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've missed the point.

Maybe they understood the point and disagreed with it.

The point, if such a thing exists, is to accept any and all of those possibilities with equanimity.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#105

Post by manifestsilence » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #47

aidenn0 wrote: post #18

As an example of one of the more notorious puzzles in the Sierra games of yesteryear, in Space Quest, you have a sand skimmer (think Luke's sand speeder). When you get to where you are going, you need to sell it for money. If you get out without removing your keys, it is stolen. Then someone offers you enough money to continue on in the game. If you say yes, then much later in the game you die because you don't have…

Having played most of the Sierra and LucasArts games when I was much younger, I feel, though cannot confirm, that there was a shift in these kinds of games such that you couldn't actually progress too far beyond a fail state. That is, by about Space Quest II or III, you could still take an action that would lead to your death within a minute or so, but you could no longer take actions that would lead you to dying/bei…

Definitely by later (early Windows) games, this is true. Neverhood was a very fun one where it was advertised that there was only one way to die. And that was marked, "don't do this, you will die".

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#106

Post by manifestsilence » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #50

Always pining for more adventure games that remind me of the Sierra/LucasArts games of my youth. Can we start a thread here of great modern examples? I recently played Machinarium, and enjoyed it a lot. My wife and I played it for many evenings on the couch, and computer games are not her thing at all. I'm finishing up Infamous Machine on my Android phone. It's a fairly silly, small game, but a direct homage to Lucas…

Neverhood and Samorost are also fun. The latter is by the Machinarium creators.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#107

Post by girzel » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

bbojan wrote: post #103

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

The French have a term for this - vie quotidienne. Literal translation would be "everyday life", but the French term has an aspect of positivity in it that I don't think carries over to the English version.

There's a nice phrase in Chinese: 过日子, literally "passing the days". It also has that connotation of being content with a regular life, wanting nothing special. The phrase is also extended into several other usages (thriftiness, etc), but that's the heart of it.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#108

Post by manifestsilence » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

pololee wrote: post #77

sulZ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you may have replied to the wrong thread[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289827

Oo. Thx.

Having just read the other thread, this gave me a great moment of confusion and deja vu as the two trains of thought entangled in my mind. Kudos. :)

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#109

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

DantesKite wrote: post #71

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

It's interesting how all the tedious tasks listed are a product of modernity. Vacuuming, driving to work, flossing, doing dishes, etc. I wonder how repetitive life feels for humans who still have to hunt for their food. Not to say that we should shift back to a hunter-gatherer society, but I wonder how much of the mundaneness of life is something we brought on ourselves and not actually an implicit part of existence.

I think I've read several studies that indicate hunter gatherers worked less than agrarian societies. However, agrarian societies are better at producing predictable abundance of food, so they outpace hunters by far. I will admit that hunting is incredibly fun. I do think we lost something as a trade-off when we moved to agrarian/industrial societies.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#110

Post by jv22222 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I gameify all those chores and try to do them more perfectly each time I do them.

I find this especially effective filling up the dishwasher more perfectly optimizing the layout each time.

I guess I approach these chores like Zen gardens.

Anyway that’s how I tricked my brain into turning the chores into quality time. ;)