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Comment by convexfunction | Hacker News Reader

I've found it difficult after starting to work full-time to fully enjoy Zachtronics games, since they use much of the same parts of my brain as my day job, but the sheer joy I got out of Zach's earlier games (SpaceChem, KOHCTPYKTOP, Codex of Alchemical Engineering) contributed a lot to my decision to work in software. I've experienced little else that scratches the "design itch" in such a pure and thoughtful way, whether games from other developers or actual software development.

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If you work somewhere where

- the requirements for each piece of work are expressed completely clearly

- you get immediate feedback on whether your solution works

- you are given, without having to build it yourself, accurate metrics for how your solution measures up in terms of costs, speed and so on

- you get to revisit problems as many times you like at your leisure and reoptimize your solutions to make them more elegant or to prioritize different properties

then I definitely envy you. For me, those things being part of the zachtronics experience turn playing the games into a shortcut to the dopamine-producing parts I love about coding.

Revisiting the problems isn't necessary to get the dopamine hit for figuring out a solution, in my opinion, and as for feedback it depends on the company culture.

Honestly it’s not a bad framework to strive for in a workplace. Introduce the ‘zachtronics test’ as a modern version of the old Joel test.

Give your workplace one point for each of the following:

1) you create acceptance tests for features before coding them

2) you have metrics that provide immediate feedback on how a feature performs

3) you have a system for determining the technical challenge level of each feature

4) you allow developers to tackle problems at the level of technical challenge they are comfortable with, so they can develop mastery before moving on to more tricky problems

5) you let people play card games between projects

6) your workplace has a striking and coherent aesthetic, complementary soundtrack and a compelling storyline

… maybe not the last one.

I said "much of the same parts of my brain", not "the experience is identical".

I've started to feel this way about Factorio... I only can play it if I've felt I've been productive or that I've e.g.: a model training or code compiling in the background.

The reason being that I stop and think: "This is scratching an itch that something _actually_ productive would as well". So whenever I feel like playing Factorio, I pick up a side-project instead if one's been neglected.

Yes, I felt very much the same after my first playthrough. I came back and was suddenly thinking through all these possible solutions to factory management only to realise it felt exactly like programming work and I should probably go and do that instead.

I mostly enjoy my work, and it's nice to feel productive, but the two things are not the same for me. I can be very productive knocking out task after task I don't enjoy, while I can spend a days enjoying the process of chasing down a solutions to a a very minor task with very minor impact.

I like the Zachtronics games not because I feel productive but because I enjoy the nature of the problems they present, and the fact that I can pursue them without any of the headaches or stress that may come with normal work.

Completely agree. I was completely sucked in by Opus Magnum, but other than that, I've bounced off all of them.

But I know understimulated teenage-me would have been all over that stuff, so there's definitely a market for it.

Same here. I was playing TIS-100 one day when I thought - why not just do Leetcode?

TIS-100 brought back some of the same joy that I had when I began with programming many years ago. Since then programming has become boring for me, but the weird limitations of TIS-100 almost made it feel like I was starting fresh again. I loved learning tons of small tricks that I could apply to beat the harder levels.

Shenzhen I/O otoh felt like work.

Exapunks was my favorite of the three. If you liked TIS-100 I'd highly recommend trying out Exapunks.

Shenzen has that card game though, so you can slack off at work

Yeah. Why fire up Shenzhen I/O when you can instead dive into a design around some neat, but poorly documented chip from China in kicad.

Or jyst some interestimg hardware project in general.

In Shenzhen I/O, at least you know going in that every task is actually solvable.

And getting it wrong won’t set fire to anything. Or get your LAN hacked.

Well, leetcode is also a game.

I liked Infinifactory the most because being in 3D space maximizes the difference from normal programming.

Same here. I loved Spacechem, was told that if I enjoyed spacechem I would enjoy programming, and that was what kickstarted my journey.

I miss the particular challenge of the older games like Spacechem.

Opus Magnum is very fun and doesn't use too much of the Programming parts of the brain!

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