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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 31st, 2023

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  • ‘Toy’ feels strange to me here. It’s more of a just-works vs power-tool distinction. Sometimes people like tools that require you to RTFM because the deeper understanding has concrete benefits; it’s not just fun. User-friendliness is not all upside, it is still a tradeoff.

    You’re absolutely right about hurting new users by not making the destinction, whatever label is used.







  • Yeah, being a niche product without the economies of scale elsewhere in gaming makes the price really awkward. My hope is that will improve over time if the install base keeps growing.

    I use mine just about every day, I’ve been fully obsessed with a game on multiple occasions, and I’m excited every time there are new things in the catalog. Easily worth full game-console price for the joy I’ve gotten out of it. But, that doesn’t really help anybody else, I know.

    It really is a lot less of a gimmick than it might seem. The final game of the first season is a shockingly polished gameboy-zelda-style adventure that I’ve played start-to-finish more than once.







  • C is a little older than namespacing and object orientation. C++ wasn’t even a glimmer in Bjarne’s eye when these conventions were laid down.

    And yes, having to google it is part of the design. Originally C programmers would have had to read actual manuals about this stuff. Once you learn the names you don’t really forget so it works well enough even now for ubiquitous standard library functions.

    And yet, C was an ergonomic revelation to programmers of the time. Now it’s the arcane grandpa that most youngsters don’t put up with.