Hacker News Reader

Comment by sreyaNotfilc | Hacker News Reader

God technology moves so fast. I'd be stupid not to learn this stuff. It could be life changing!

The question remains; When do I have the time to learn this stuff? I was thinking about this for a while. Besides working/planning/coding on my own project, I feel like I don't have much time for this.

I think I'm going about this all wrong though. I should divi up my week into departments. That is, have a few hacking days, a planning day, a maintenance day and a R&D day.

Having one day a week to study new techniques doesn't sound like much, but at least it gets the juices flowing. Its all about balance.

View on HN

Look ... guys ... this is NOT TECH, unless you classify hooking up a sewage pipe at the RV Park as tech too.

This is just another example of fighting through a gross kludgey mess to do something relatively trivial that we already knew how to do, much more robustly and performantly, in other systems.

Any time you see an article titled "X in HTML5" you know you are about to ride the short bus. I recommend learning some computer science.

See also Alan Kay's comments about the Web vs the Internet, recently linked on HN...

Are you trying to say that the utilization of existing technologies and concept to create or solve other technological problems (e.g. innovations) not technology or in the field of technology?

Does that mean that my Android phone is not a part of technology since, well, a phone existed long before a mobile phone was made? The GUI OS was "perfected" decades ago. So, the Android OS isn't part of the technology club either? What about using the internet on said device? I gather that it was/is very trivial to just hook up a phone and an OS and the internet and whatever other components of these mobile devices does not constitute it as technology because it should have been straight forward to just hook these things up together.

Basically all Computer Science really is is a collections of 0s and 1s thrown together to make things happen. I guess our minds and imaginations just doesn't compare to a room full of monkeys randomly typing 0s and 1s on a typewriter and having it go through a compiler. I'm sure they'll launch astronauts to the moon fairly soon.

Wikipedia defines technology as "...the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function."

But, who knows, Wikipedia isn't always accurate, right?

As for you statement, I guess I'll just deal with riding the short bus. This bus has a lot of fascinating things that are just simply mind-blowing to me. Yes, a lot of concepts existed before. Perhaps even better than what's presented in the blog. But the fact that someone did think of a really cool/elegant way to solve this "gross kludgely mess" and present to us for free is alright by me. I love this type of stuff, no matter how trivial it is. Its really a celebration of the human mind and spirit that we can overcome faults in existing problems. shrugs

I think what jblow is trying to get across is that simply writing an article saying "server side JS and client side packet sending libraries exist" hardly begins to solve the problem of how to implement responsive and robust netcode. Node.js and socket.io are literally technology in the broad sense and make a huge number of things possible, but they offer no help with the hard parts of writing a Real Time Multiplayer game. It isn't relevant, it doesn't facilitate the job, it's the wrong layer of abstraction; at the level of actually making sure your real time game performs well, it is not technology. If the article pointed to an actual netcode library for JavaScript games, then yes, that would be technology.

e: reading jblow's other comments makes me realize he's not talking about this at all. So treat the above as my personal issue with the article.

Is hooking up your toilet considered technology? This kind of plumbing used to be super-high-tech at one time in human history. I think you would find few people who think of it that way now, though.

Hey, make your own choice about what you want to do with your life and what you want to consider cool.

I have written programs using native OpenGL/DirectX that are over a decade old. You are completely correct in that the technology is not new, in fact it is far inferior. However, the one thing to get excited over (and the only reason I even consider doing this type of development) is the accessibility of the finished product. It is far easier to get people to try out your product, game, whatever when all they have to do is visit a web page.

In addition, the "connected" nature of the web, real time communications aspect of it is exciting. Sure this could be done in C, but the cost of doing it in this type of environment is far less.

So while on a technical level it is not impressive, I wouldn't dismiss it.

I actually wrote the article with this in mind. Lots of people dont know how multiplayer actually works. The demo is 'in html5' because people can try it now in their browser. Also because thats where the sites target market is.

I have no objection to the actual existence of the article. I just think it's important for people to understand this fact, that seems to be increasingly misunderstood these days, that "technology" is about expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. Just because someone types program-like things into a computer doesn't mean what he is typing is technology.

If the defining property of your activity is that you are trying to negotiate messes that other people have made in order to make things happen, where the things you are making happen are not novel in themselves, that is pretty much what working in a bureaucracy is like. So you can think of it as "working in a vast decentralized computer bureaucracy" rather than "working in tech".

Last I checked, science -- not technology -- is about expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. Technology is the reification and application of that knowledge: necessarily a messy thing.

That's your definition of technology. I don't share it.

I actually really appreciate your comment about bureaucracy The main difference on my end is that I believe "working in a vast decentralized computer bureaucracy" is completely analogous to "working in tech" whether you like it or not. Bruno Latour's book Aramis is a case study in this idea. Brief review of that book here:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~tmisa/reviews/Latour_Aramis.pdf

Any technologist who believes they're not working in a vast bureaucracy (both of the political kind and the technology itself) is not paying enough attention.

I think I will simply take his comment as a generalisation. The semantics from the dictionary simply state the application of science is technology. i.e Computer science applied, is technology.

I agree whole heartedly, learning the science is key.

How do you propose to make web games? Flash? Read Knuth and then use Flash? Abandon web games because it's too messy for you? Please be more specific about what you propose instead.

If you want to make web games, make web games. That's fine. Just don't be deluded that this is "working in tech". It is not.

I agree. It's engineering. There's a difference between launching a spacecraft and use it to do something no one has done before and building a 50km long bridge. Both are incredibly hard and expensive, but one of them is "only" engineering, the other has science as well.

There's no such thing as working in "tech". You are always working in "tech", whether it is using Excel or WebGL. When newspapers call the latter "tech", what they really mean is "new tech".

Programming a 3D multiplayer game in a browser is a re-combination of existing technologies, and therefore not "new tech". (Though of course, new, compared to Excel, but only by a few years.)

It sure as hell is. You have just chosen a definition of technology that differs from the rest of the world.

I see anything aside from images and text on the web as a kludge. But it turns out ubiquity and connectivity is so powerful that it trumps almost everything else.

What open source robust and performant system are you proposing here?

Technology doesn't actually move fast - you just haven't been watching this progress over the last 5 or so years. Indeed I've found technology to be slow burning with a large bang. Similar examples are found in start ups, inventions and financial crises. Discontinuities only occur due to inadequate sampling of the information stream.

You're right.

It seems like there's so many places to watch. Its really a coin flip. You can either choose to look one way, or look the other. That is, focus on what you know, or go on a technological safari. I think having a R&D day will help balance this out.

I'm always using new techniques and technologies, but they are only logical progressions in my current scope of knowledge. What I need to really do is to go from A to Epsilon to Z and then to B. At least for one day a week. I just want to be a bit more well rounded and beef up my "bag O' tricks".

The easiest way is to work on a side project (of your choice) and explore what technologies would be best.

For example, why not try to write a HTML5 game? Even if its something relatively simple like a platformer, you will have opportunity to learn a bunch of technologies and actually have an end product (if you have the stamina)

Good idea. With my pet project (artJutsu) I've already experimented a lot with jQuery's ajax call to asp.Net web services. The results actually changed the way I approach problems at my 9-5.

I should figure out how to incorporate this html5 game dynamic into the site somehow. Perhaps as a chat-game project. Who knows what cool things I can learn from this.

Exposure is the greatest thing a developer can have. It helps spur up innovations. Kinda like a kid with an Erector set.

It seems to be that in your 9-5 you cant play with new stuff and you're learning on your on time and not getting paid for that, start doing it in your job or change job now, you're bringing more value to were you are than they pay to you

i started just making a simple HTML5 game, and kept going at it. Taught me a bunch abt game development, the industry and ultimately founded a startup

Reply on news.ycombinator.com