Oddbean

@Shadowman311 that is a fascinating idea, as a modder I've been asked to do coding streams. I know I'd hate working on a team because it's a hobby, but I can definitely see the argument that people who would be innovating are sitting on stream saying 'why can't it be like this' instead of spending the time making it like that

If I did coding streams it would be me constantly talking to myself, swearing at the computer and every so often getting pissed off and abruptly ending the stream and going on a 3 hours walk in the countryside.

@misterjesus @Shadowman311 Exactly! I don't think people realise how much of coding is ctrl F and chatgpt. Recently I tried to make a starship console that can read the atmosphere of a planet. This is after having a hand scanner that can do the same. So just put the scanner code in the console right? It took me two days to get functional

I try to avoid shortcuts these days and just try to understand what is going on by either writing tests around functions (if I can) or just stepping through each function. Only once I understand WTF is going on will I write any code. It is typically quicker this way because you spend less time hacking and more time actually just writing what you need. Probably won't work for modding though.

@misterjesus @Shadowman311 by hacking I've able to find some things. More than once I've dumped an entire segment into chatgpt and asked it what various things did. Amazing teacher. I'm working with BYOND which is not the best language to do well... anything.

I need to build a mental model of how the code works. Chat GPT explaining the code would be like another developer explaining the code. It will go in one ear and out the other. I am not a modder, though. I write boring business software.

@misterjesus @Shadowman311 I think the worst I've ever seen is star trek online. Supposedly even professional devs they bring in have trouble figuring out how that thing runs and it's been a big issue for the company. I took a crack at it and I can't even figure out how the game knows what map to load

The same stuff happens in a lot of monolithic applications. Suppose I had access to the source. I would stick logging statements everywhere in the source and run the thing in debug with a `tail -f` on a file (or whatever the equivalent is on Windows). Or I would try to break the game by removing code until something didn't work. You just have to think of a way to isolate the problem. Once you can do that you can normally figure out what is happening.