#coding thoughts

Been difficult to post lately for so many reasons, one of which is that the thoughts have been very code-y lately - but also social

At a @renegadeguild meetup the subject of elevators came up and I was lead to read the The Intuitionist

a book I realized a third of the way in was written by the same guy who wrote Zone One- a beloved zombie novel. Colson Whitehead. Would recommend.

Interesting book. Lots of relevant bits, but one that I latched onto with amusement was swan diving back into Elevator Saga - an elevator optimizing Javascript coding game. Would recommend.

I remember this launching sometime while I was back at ____, so that's 2015 onward - and over 7 years ago. We played it at work- have been meaning to go back to it - fun to try and model it well, knowing what the challenges would/could look like. I remain very mournful at the lack of easy 'let' in the JavaScript language. As someone who never learned a language other than my native English, this is the first time I'm feeling something missing in expressing myself/my thoughts even though I feel rather fluent in both.

I always joked that Google was my D&D Patron and now it feels truer with the evil twist of misaligned corporate values. Despite my love of Kotlin, have been finding JavaScript to coming in more handy. Handy for helping @renegadeguild type things- a group which continues to be pleasant and whose individual company I occasionally get to entertain in person. Recent outings which included seeing Sinners in IMAX. Would recommend.

For some reason, just trying to set the variable the previous way was setting all the objects to be selected and all descriptions would be shown at once which was annoying. I had tried defining functions before but never realized that a Function statement would actually work on the button like that! This took way longer than it should’ve to figure out, but I’m so excited that I finally got it to work properly! Of course, I’m testing it out on this separate renpy test game I made to experiment with stuff, so I hope the system transfers over to the actual game without trouble.

Yesterday, I got around to adding a page to my site to list my books. It wasn't a huge undertaking, and a lot of it was just taking existing stuff and putting it together in one place. Even so, whenever I work on my website, it feels a bit like working on my car or something. I do basically all of it by hand in a text editor, so it's just this big block of text that can seem incomprehensible and complex on the surface, yet it is also straightforward, and then I load it up in my browser and see this thing that is basically just as I had envisioned it, even though it sure didn't look like that in the piles and files of PHP, HTML, and CSS.

Of course, web design is far less codey than other things I've done as a result of having a BS and MS in Computer Science, but it still gives a sense of satisfaction to me, similar to my more purely artistic and literary pursuits. In fact, when it comes to coding and programming, I often find the simplest things are the most satisfying. Sure, other things may be more complex and impressive, but getting a box of sand to do something simple and useful in a pretty way can bring a different sense of joy and pride...A warmer sense of it...A sense that it was made for a human reason...

I don't know...Anyway, here's a link to the book page on my website: