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Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

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Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#92
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, Kafka and Apache Kafka have almost no meaningful connection. According to Wikipedia, the author was reading (Franz) Kafka, who was a writer, and the software system is "optimized for writing". (Franz) Kafka wasn't "optimized" for anything, so this is just whimsical naming. It could just as well have been named Apache Hemingway, or Apache Tolstoy. Whimsical naming is ok, but can also be confusing and annoy…

Wow, that's so unrelated. I think I'd tacitly assumed that it was named that because adopting an event-driven architecture results in byzantine and overly complicated software, like the bureaucracies in Kafka's novels.

Or maybe you wake up one morning and discover it turned into a giant bug...

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's built in the shape of the reward center of my brain Yes, it's like a distillation of the feeling I get from the most enjoyable parts of my job, risking productivity loss from real world responsibilities until the complexity rises high enough to require project organization and advanced planning of tasks that are the least enjoyable parts of my job, along the lines of: "Crap, I have a sudden urgent need to deal…

Yes, but it also embodies the worst parts of my job, which is that there is always more to do and the work is never ending.

At least in the case of Factorio you choose to do it. On the other hand, you don’t get paid for it.

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#94
post #78
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any good explainers of whats fun about SE for those who will never play it?

It adds hundreds of hours of gameplay, new endings, multiple planets, and much longer progression chains that really push your ability to optimize to the limit. If the base game isn’t enough to keep you interested anymore because it’s gotten too simple, space exploration is a good hand grenade to mix things up.

The negative thing about SE is also that it adds hundreds of hours of gameplay. I’m 200 hours in and I’ve barely made it to other planets. The 2 hours a day I have to play with it are simply not enough.

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that we're starting to see ChatGPT responses to questions like this in forums.

I'm willing to make an exception in this case, because using LLMs for nonsense is exactly the usecase they are built for.

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#96
post #24
post #23

Semi related: Are other people also annoyed by how many projects are using names of completely unrelated famous things? I expected to read some wild association between a game and Franz Kafka, but no, it's about a streaming platform which happens to be named "Kafka". This is getting seriously annoying when you google for some, e.g. historical, term and then your search results are littered by some completely unrelate…

Even worse, Kafka and Apache Kafka have almost no meaningful connection. According to Wikipedia, the author was reading (Franz) Kafka, who was a writer, and the software system is "optimized for writing". (Franz) Kafka wasn't "optimized" for anything, so this is just whimsical naming. It could just as well have been named Apache Hemingway, or Apache Tolstoy. Whimsical naming is ok, but can also be confusing and annoy…

I was at one point thinking of making a Kafka (the software) competitor called Tuberculosis, but maybe that was only funny in my head.

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#97
post #23

Semi related: Are other people also annoyed by how many projects are using names of completely unrelated famous things? I expected to read some wild association between a game and Franz Kafka, but no, it's about a streaming platform which happens to be named "Kafka". This is getting seriously annoying when you google for some, e.g. historical, term and then your search results are littered by some completely unrelate…

I've read a few of Franz Kafka's short stories, but most of them went over my head. As someone who loves Factorio, I was legitimately excited to get more insight. Now: My disappointment is immeassurable and my day is ruined.

I never thought how weird it would be to read Kafka in anything but German - I bet it's like reading Dostojewski in anything but Russian, but somehow worse?

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder who the real world equivalent of biters are… sales?

Too many to list. This past week’s productivity was partially hijacked by a vendor relationship gone sour to the point of getting the lawyers involved. And so if sales are biters, where do lawyers rank?

lawyers are the spitters

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#99
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that we're starting to see ChatGPT responses to questions like this in forums.

I'm willing to make an exception in this case, because using LLMs for nonsense is exactly the usecase they are built for.

Yes, but nonesense has no place here. There are other places to shitpost, namely this would be perfectly placed on the r/copypasta subreddit (NSFW, navigate with caution)

Re: Understanding Kafka with Factorio (2019)

#100
post #44

I recently started playing Factorio, and I kept thinking that this is what "low code" integration/automation tools should look like. Developer tooling with extremely clear visuals, obvious dataflow, endless combinations into which the rigidly defined components can be assembled to do exactly what they do. As opposed to so many takes on "flow based" programming, which present some imperfect nodal representation of the…

I am interested in this topic, so thank you for mentioning it.

I haven't played Factorio but this article GIFs helped me understand it, at least from a high level simplistic perspective!

I think most of programming is just logistics: moving data from one place to another, picking and choosing what fields to use for a given purpose and then calling a function with those selected parameters or talking to another system.

I am working on a number of experiments in this area. I'm working on a programming environment which is unlike programming languages where you specify instructions and the state is implied but you work directly with state and instructions are implied.

The problem with nodal editors is that they're not very information dense.

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