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Sensei's Library

senseis.xmp.net

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Re: Sensei's Library

#11

Post by vnorilo »

epivosism wrote: post #6
pixelpoet wrote: post #4

Wonderful resource, don't miss the excellent section on Go proverbs: https://senseis.xmp.net/?GoProverbs A particularly lovely one: https://senseis.xmp.net/?UseGoToMeetFriends

I ran a go club for years and from it 1) met most of current friends 2) helped two couples get together, 3 kids and counting 3) got connected to someone who eventually helped me get the best job I could ever find. I think this happens because it functions as a type of personality test, and allows people to demonstrate diligence and curiosity without being as directly confrontational as chess. In a club setting it als…

It helps that Go has a surprisingly powerful handicap system [1] - being a casual player I was able to play meaningful matches against a clearly superior opponent with suitable starting advantage, something that I have never been able to enjoy in chess.

That somehow supports the mentality of accepting your respective skill levels and enjoying the game together.

1: https://senseis.xmp.net/?Handicap (from the featured site)

Re: Sensei's Library

#12

Post by xxpor »

apetresc wrote: post #5

Sensei's Library has been around since I first started playing Go back in the early 2000s. Not a single thing about it has changed, technology-wise, in that entire time; but the community is still adding content to it daily. I guess it's kind of like HN in that regard, but with twice the longevity. It's a little corner of the internet I earnestly hope never goes away.

Seeing how "basic" the site is made me think how little we hear about getting Slashdotted these days. Obviously not literally, but back in say, 2010, if a site like this reached the front page of /., reddit, or HN, you'd expect it to blow up immediately.

Re: Sensei's Library

#14

Post by arnoxmp »

xxpor wrote: post #12
apetresc wrote: post #5

Sensei's Library has been around since I first started playing Go back in the early 2000s. Not a single thing about it has changed, technology-wise, in that entire time; but the community is still adding content to it daily. I guess it's kind of like HN in that regard, but with twice the longevity. It's a little corner of the internet I earnestly hope never goes away.

Seeing how "basic" the site is made me think how little we hear about getting Slashdotted these days. Obviously not literally, but back in say, 2010, if a site like this reached the front page of /., reddit, or HN, you'd expect it to blow up immediately.

I can't talk about /. and reddit, but HN barely moves the needle. Today the logs say that there are ~5800 page views with a referrer from HN. CPU load: 0.07 :o)

The nice thing about "basic sites" is that they don't use many resources. SL runs on a dedicated (bare metal/root) server on Hetzner (along several other services), and as long as the working set of the DB fits into memory (for Sensei's this is ~500MB) I'd argue that it withstands /., but probably not the reddit frontpage.

Re: Sensei's Library

#16

Post by chis »

I love this site. My favorite page is https://senseis.xmp.net/?ThePowerOfTheB2Bomber , such classic old-school internet humor.

  "The secret of the B2 Bomber is of course that it contains not less than two empty triangles, which radiates absolutely no influence, and thus the shape is virtually undetectable on the enemy's radar."

Re: Sensei's Library

#17

Post by mcbuilder »

chis wrote: post #16

I love this site. My favorite page is https://senseis.xmp.net/?ThePowerOfTheB2Bomber , such classic old-school internet humor. "The secret of the B2 Bomber is of course that it contains not less than two empty triangles, which radiates absolutely no influence, and thus the shape is virtually undetectable on the enemy's radar."

As a 16 year old in the early 2000s, I used to spend a lot of time at Sensei's. I'm a bit saddened that at lot of the "get strong at" book parodies are broken, however they live on with the Wayback Machine. Here was one of my favorites. https://web.archive.org/web/20070224195507/https://senseis.x...

Re: Sensei's Library

#18

Post by pixelpoet »

epivosism wrote: post #6
pixelpoet wrote: post #4

Wonderful resource, don't miss the excellent section on Go proverbs: https://senseis.xmp.net/?GoProverbs A particularly lovely one: https://senseis.xmp.net/?UseGoToMeetFriends

I ran a go club for years and from it 1) met most of current friends 2) helped two couples get together, 3 kids and counting 3) got connected to someone who eventually helped me get the best job I could ever find. I think this happens because it functions as a type of personality test, and allows people to demonstrate diligence and curiosity without being as directly confrontational as chess. In a club setting it als…

My cousin got married to a national Go champion some years after I introduced her to the game, and I met my exgf sort of in this way too. It's interesting how it happens :)

Re: Sensei's Library

#19

Post by amiantos »

arnoxmp wrote: post #8
apetresc wrote: post #5

Sensei's Library has been around since I first started playing Go back in the early 2000s. Not a single thing about it has changed, technology-wise, in that entire time; but the community is still adding content to it daily. I guess it's kind of like HN in that regard, but with twice the longevity. It's a little corner of the internet I earnestly hope never goes away.

True, it's still a LAMP stack, migrating it to new PHP and MySQL (now MariaDB) versions every now & then, fixing a bug here and there, adding LetsEncrypt, switching from CVS to Mercurial to Git, etc. The last big feature I added was math formulas (2 years ago or so). This project really told me how important it is to leave comments for your future self - especially, if your future self hasn't touched some parts of th…

Do you already have a plan in place for what should happen to it after those 25+ years (universe willing)? Anyone to inherit it?

Re: Sensei's Library

#20

Post by j4cob »

arnoxmp wrote: post #8
apetresc wrote: post #5

Sensei's Library has been around since I first started playing Go back in the early 2000s. Not a single thing about it has changed, technology-wise, in that entire time; but the community is still adding content to it daily. I guess it's kind of like HN in that regard, but with twice the longevity. It's a little corner of the internet I earnestly hope never goes away.

True, it's still a LAMP stack, migrating it to new PHP and MySQL (now MariaDB) versions every now & then, fixing a bug here and there, adding LetsEncrypt, switching from CVS to Mercurial to Git, etc. The last big feature I added was math formulas (2 years ago or so). This project really told me how important it is to leave comments for your future self - especially, if your future self hasn't touched some parts of th…

Wow, thank you for all of your work on Sensei's Library! It made a huge impression on me in ~2003, and has really helped me understand Go better and get stronger.

I work on Let's Encrypt. I'm glad you find the service useful!

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