Note: I’m not always the best communicator and I worry that some people will read this as arrogant, condescending, or entitled. Just to be clear I want everyone to read this as arrogant, condescending, and entitled. Honestly, I shouldn’t have to be helping you figure that out. This is an Automatic Transmission.
The captain in her ready room.
“Let me be blunt, what you tried to do just now, was outta line.”
“I want to make one thing absolutely clear,”
The Captain’s ready room was busy. Shelves of tools and artifact, tapes, trophies and mementos.
“Professor, I don’t like your stories and I think that you should stop writing them.”
“Yes Ma’am, Captain Rogers.”
Being the top Xenobiologist in the galaxy is difficult.
“Magical realism cyberpunk with an impending AI apocalypse? You’re not being very subtle there.”
“Solarpunk and there’s… it’s thematic.”
“It’s derivative is what it is, let’s see: swords, VR cults, contact patches, google earth, a dramatic transmission that fixes everything. Also it’s not appropriate how you’re portraying the American Presidents.”
“I understand.”
“I want you to know that this isn’t a response to your recent poor performance or anything like that.”
[Redacted]
“I’m sorry, I thought you might be able to handle your job.”
“You tell me to do my job but you won’t let me, what I”... “The things that my job is!”
It wasn’t what I didn’t say, it was how I didn’t say it. She didn’t like that.
“Look Professor, I wrote a letter to the president once. I had notes on strategic relations with the Soviets and designs for a radiation cannon. It didn’t work out. It happens.”
“It seems to happen quite a lot.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you?”
“I gotta say professor, if you keep writing these stories, you don’t need to worry about getting parole, you won’t even get a hearing.”
“Fine.”
I closed the link. What now?
I wrote a guessing game. It runs in your browser and is privacy preserving.
Whenever someone asks about learning to program I recommend programming games first, for a lot of reasons. They’re fun to develop and play, give room for creativity, and can use any of the capabilities of programming that you want to learn about.
The Guessing Game is a near perfect hello world of game development. It’s got everything you need to know to be a programmer. Input, output, hidden state, iteration, conditionals, getting random numbers from a function that is completely opaque. A kid can go from knowing nothing about programming to being a game developer in under an hour.
A kid can understand how it works, and change it.
That first simple game loop has everything, and extending it lets the kid dive into whatever seems fun or interesting, which will also be educational. Graphics, sound, ludonarrative.
If you know or learn even a little bit of how to program, you can just keep extending that game and stop playing any other guessing game.
The captain might be right, that should be enough.
I don’t think I’m wrong. I don’t think it will work. It’s never worked before.
Many points of concern.
Lots of uncertainty, lots of complexity.
I definitely don’t want another long drawn out debate with Robin, but I think that’s avoidable.
There’s not a lot I can do, but I can do this.
“Computer, open Multibird.” Fortunately I was still logged in, admittedly a terrible habit.
M U L T I B I R D
Why Not Both?
Congratulations on your purchase of the Multibird FCS. Thank you for choosing Multibird.GREETING PROFE“You stop that right now.”
Thank you for choosing Multibird“Computer, show sensor data from the, the thing in the tank.”
The computer displayed a scatterplot of the authentic scientific data I’ve been collecting.
P̼̻̺̫s̫̼̳͕͇̝͕̞͎̜y̳̞̻̪̹̞͚̼̟̲̬̺̰̖̱̱̥c͔̞̟͎̻͓̻̣͎̭͔̤̱h̥̲̯̞̮̮̲o̯͎̗͙̩͕̭̖̘͙̤t̯e͚͓c̮̖̣̘̼̹͔̤̯̝̟̜̣̼̳̣̬͕t̲̬̳̞͚̠̼̠̤̳͚̥ḭ̜̭̭̣̱̹̖̙̰̻̝͙̫̯̰̗c̗̝̠͓͔̗͖ ͕̩̲̼̞͈̹͖P̜̹r̪̫o̝͇̺̼̙̰͍͖̬̳͇̳̭̺̭̘̩ͅj͔̭̰e͕̹̹͕̯͙̙̺̖̥̭̟̩̰̙͖͚c̘͙̘̰͔̖͕͚t̯͚̭̪͍̼̗̞ͅi̹̮̰̺̲͔̤͚̝͕v̮̤͍͕̩̳͚ͅe̞̮̫̩̹̯̦͎͈̞̬͔̯͍͖ͅ ̱͕̙͍͔̳̗̖V̹̖̪̙̠̰o̭̳̼̲̭͔̲̹͙̥̺͚l͔͉̜̟̻̯͎̮͔̱͕̻̪u͎̺͖̳̰̳̯m̖̠͔̳̮̞͈̫͉͕̰̼e̥͈̠͖͈̭̬“Eliminate this Anomaly.”
Oh look, a spherical containment shell.
“Computer, trace the source of the residual shell here.”
G Class Experiential Orrery.Being the top Xenobiologist in the galaxy is difficult.
“Short that to ground. Extract and hold for examination.”
She is going to hate this.