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I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

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Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#201

Post by Dylan16807 »

RyanOD wrote: post #200
Dylan16807 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're joking or not about the form letter there. It's such a terrible response for someone that was not in fact suggesting a new feature for the franchise. And even if it had been, rejecting the entire letter for one sentence is still bad. It's polite. Being polite is pretty much expected here.

I wasn't joking. I don't think that was a form letter. I think someone took the time to write a personalized, thoughtful letter to a wide-eyed 10-year old. The world needs more of that.

If it had to be a rejection letter that can't respond to anything specific, it's reasonably thoughtful under those constraints.

But it really didn't have to be that.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#202

Post by kraig911 »

SolubleSnake wrote: post #198
kraig911 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so much wish we could all get together as engineers and make a site where kids can write to and send videos etc on and we just praise them and tell them their ideas are good as a community.

i will never stop finding it weird when American software developers/IT people call themselves 'Engineers'. I am actually an 'Engineer' in the UK and it's a very different term here that basically implies someone who works on physical projects, in CAD or by hand. i am also a software developer...but in my experience software developers often make very bad 'engineers' as we would define the term just because they're n…

Engineering in general to me just means 'designed' by specification per an area study. Whether software or hardware/industrial application. I know UK is all about titles though as if they're 'worth' something. A lot of stuff we use in modern day was made by someone who claimed to be an engineer but was really a hobbyist on to something.

That said in the US there are some specifications of a license engineer that you have to earn. Electrical/Petroleum/Nuclear/Structural etc those areas do have licensing associated that is different state by state. The main issue with software engineering is it forgoes that completely there just wasn't time to make a process about it. It was/is always about time to market.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#203

Post by kraig911 »

hinkley wrote: post #122
kraig911 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so much wish we could all get together as engineers and make a site where kids can write to and send videos etc on and we just praise them and tell them their ideas are good as a community.

Volunteer to judge the science fair?

I think that's a different thing. Yes it's a possibility. I'm just saying a site where say there's a group of engineers/scientist that are just there to listen and praise. No judging No competition just a place to keep kids interested and not dither away their creativity watching other kids play roblox on youtube.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#204

Post by mung »

SolubleSnake wrote: post #198
kraig911 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so much wish we could all get together as engineers and make a site where kids can write to and send videos etc on and we just praise them and tell them their ideas are good as a community.

i will never stop finding it weird when American software developers/IT people call themselves 'Engineers'. I am actually an 'Engineer' in the UK and it's a very different term here that basically implies someone who works on physical projects, in CAD or by hand. i am also a software developer...but in my experience software developers often make very bad 'engineers' as we would define the term just because they're n…

They have high school graduation…

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#205

Post by Anamon »

personalcompute wrote: post #108
WA wrote: post #82

I once mailed the maker of a little German indie game called Clonk about wanting to learn programming. It was my favorite game for a while. Never heard back from him, which I found disappointing. Now, I answer every single email my app customers are sending me and have been doing this for close to 20 years and I get a lot of positive reviews for the great customer support.

Wow, I didn't expect to see Clonk on HN today! Almost 20 years ago, as a 13 year old in the US I managed to make friends with an older player from Germany, and then we collaborated on making Clonk Rage mods together in c4script. It was an amazing experience and did help me get more into programming, so I'm so sorry to hear about your experience! I do recall members of the development team at the time being accessible…

Awesome, Clonk fans on HN! To this day, I don't think there's any game series I spent more total hours in than Clonk. Also starting in 1998 with Clonk 4, especially with one particular friend from school, we played these sometimes every day for hours, all through Planet, GWE, Endeavour, and Rage (did I miss one?). As far as splitscreen multiplayer is concerned, it's still one of the best and most versatile computer games ever written, in my opinion. Bastard of a learning curve, though, which is why I never managed to get anyone beyond that one friend hooked, and I stopped playing it when our life paths started diverging... :(

I also remember Matthes Bender as more of a distant, benevolent ruler keeping the project running but staying very much in the background. IIRC by the time Clonk 4 came out he already had his consultancy going, so he was probably glad to offload the community stuff to other people.

By the way, Clonk is still going: there's OpenClonk, as well as an open-source continuation of the original Rage branch. Even the CCAN is still online!

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#206

Post by WA »

Anamon wrote: post #205
personalcompute wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I didn't expect to see Clonk on HN today! Almost 20 years ago, as a 13 year old in the US I managed to make friends with an older player from Germany, and then we collaborated on making Clonk Rage mods together in c4script. It was an amazing experience and did help me get more into programming, so I'm so sorry to hear about your experience! I do recall members of the development team at the time being accessible…

Awesome, Clonk fans on HN! To this day, I don't think there's any game series I spent more total hours in than Clonk. Also starting in 1998 with Clonk 4, especially with one particular friend from school, we played these sometimes every day for hours, all through Planet, GWE, Endeavour, and Rage (did I miss one?). As far as splitscreen multiplayer is concerned, it's still one of the best and most versatile computer g…

Nice, a dedicated Clonk player. My obsession didn't last as long. Many years later, King Arthur's Gold scratched a very similar itch: https://kag2d.com/en/ The community is very small now. Peak was 10 years ago, but still an excellent multiplayer game.

Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978

#207

Post by bigDinosaur »

Keyframe wrote: post #180
bigDinosaur wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can spin up any idea and claim it increases brand loyalty, but you have to have actual evidence that that either happens or actually matters in some way, and in this case it probably doesn't and isn't worth the expense once the scale exceeds >1 employee spending more than a few minutes a day. If you've got the data to prove otherwise so that you can actually make someone money, go ahead and sell people on the ide…

I don't have to - it's called image branding and is a well-known and established marketing discipline. Not direct ROI like hard sell techniques, but it lands you with higher margins, lower customer acqusition costs, longer customer lifetime value, etc. Apple was a master at that, Nike, and in this particular example LEGO regularly responds to children mail, Nintendo built a whole business channel around it with Ninte…

Obviously the concept is different from the execution, and you provided an idea on execution (which anyone can do) which would need to be actually, you know, proved out to help with any kind of brand loyalty. Just doing random things that sound good is not a great strategy.
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