Rebecca Heineman has died
pcgamer.com
pcgamer.com
> I had to write my own string.h ANSI C library because the one 3DO supplied with their compiler had bugs! string.h??? How can you screw that up!?!?! They did! I spent a day writing all of the functions I needed in ARM 6 assembly.
https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
I can't even imagine the level of skill required to just say, "Fine, I'll write MY OWN string lib!" while chasing a deadline.
As an aside...I wonder what will happen to her personal artifacts. There was a media blitz awhile back when Tim Cain said he doesn't have the original source code to Fallout because he was "ordered to destroy it" by Interplay when he left. But Becky then chimed in to say that she did have a surviving copy, because she was a founder. [0] I hope someone else on her behalf would be able to continue that effort, but I worry that with her death, Bethesda would assert that no one else has "legal standing" to do so.
[0] https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/fallout-1-2-source-cod...
https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/burgerlib
Welcome to Burgerlib
The only low level library you'll ever need
Burgerlib is a low level operating system library that presents a common API that operates the same on numerous mobile, desktop, and video game platforms. By using the library, it will allow near instant porting of an application written on one platform to another.
Burgerlib is not meant to be considered an engine, it's a framework on to which an engine can be created on top of and by using the common API, be compatible on dozens of platforms.
Filenames and paths are standardized, all text is UTF-8 regardless of platform. Display, input, audio, music, math, timers, atomics, and typedefs operate the same.
plenty of people have implemented strcpy(), strlen(), etc for embedded-like platforms.
https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/
Rest in piece, you absolute legend.
https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
Also, 62 years is much too young! And one month from diagnosis (because of being short of breath) to dying is really rough - although there's a lot of progress on cancer treatment, some forms have symptoms at such a late stage that they're unfortunately still a death sentence...
I will never get over the company CEO sending here PNGs of new weapon models and saying, essentially, "Yeah so you can just copy & paste these into the game, right?"
Back when Blizzard was still Silicon & Synapse, we got Rebecca's source code to Another World SNES from Interplay to use for a game we would develop, and they would publish, and I was the engine programmer.
I remember reading the source code, which was ... sparsely documented, and wondering what was going on. Like "you're writing to the DMA registers?!?"
The code was amazing, because it has has to draw polygons into 8x8 pixels cells that are stored in planar format at 60FPS. On a 3.5 Mhz processor. Blew my mind.
Incidentally, the game was called "Nightmare", and later became "Blackthorne", which was released for SNES, Genesis, and PC.
"Super Fami-Com ("FAMIly COMputer")"
Doh!
Compare Nintendo 64 = Roku-Yon (Six-Four) and PlayStation = Pure-Sute
It was a masterful blend of RPG, dungeon crawl, and puzzles and had a memorable soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5kg35dNso
Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY
BT3 is available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Bards_Tale_3_-_Thief_O...
The steam remasters are incredibly faithful to the originals - right down to the timing and flow of the turn-based combat. Makes me wonder if they are emulating the original code somehow.
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=188&letter=B
... which is available for many platforms, including Windows and Linux:
https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
although the latest version of DosBox seems to be from 2019, so maybe others can suggest a more actively-maintained emulator.
There are a few other ones as well. DOSBox Staging is one. Magic DOSBox seems to be the most popular on Android. There is some iOS port as well.
They remastered all three of the first Bard's Tale games a few years ago and released them on Steam with many quality of life improvements-- I bought the set without a second thought even though I know I will probably never take the time to play it all the way through. I've spent a few dozen hours on it so far, though.
If you purchase Bards Tale 4 you get the remastered 1,2, and 3 for free.
I have played BT 1 every year or so since the late 80s.
https://www.burgerbecky.com/becky.htm
The first "Boom & Bust" episode of Netflix's series "High Score" series told the story of her winning the first Space Invaders U.S. national championship as a kid.
RIP, Becky.
She was probably the first programmer I knew by name as a kid, following the games industry as a kid.
More than a brilliant programmer she was truly a kind soul. She never approached topics with any kind of ego. Just a joy and love for the things she'd worked on and the people she'd worked with
We lost a legend.
[1]: https://corecursive.com/doomed-to-fail-with-burger-becky/
I'm that cog. Or at least, was. Situations like this make me thing a lot about the state of the industry and where I lie in life.
It’s a tragedy that our own citizens are not the direct be beneficiaries of that wealth.
I think a lot about the scene in Star Trek IV when McCoy is in a hospital and says “what is this the dark ages?”
Gofundme is like a kafkaesque tragic absurdity that - hopefully - will be looked at as an indictment of the inequitable K shaped economy we’ve built, and hopefully fixed in the future.
This framing by Forbes (any many others really) is insidious because it doesn't take into account the population number and how unevenly wealth is spread.
For instance, Switzerland is not a huge economy - around the 20th in the world, but its citizens enjoy an extremely high quality of life because both income inequality and incomes overall are significantly better that in the US.
But I couldn’t agree more that the inequality and social safety net (or lack thereof) make the numbers deeply disconnected from QoL. Which I believe is the whole point.
If so, then the US is ~7th, or 5th among nations numbering in the millions. Still very high, just not at the top.
This is a thing people believe because pharmaceutical companies keep repeating it. And to be fair, they're not entirely wrong in that getting a drug/treatment from the lab to the pharmacy is incredibly expensive because most drugs don't work and clinical trials are super expensive.
It does seem to me that a better system would be to split out the research/development and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals into the lab development (scientists), the clinical trials (should be government funded) and the manufacturing (this could easily be done via contract).
The companies have the biggest PR arms, so took the most credit for a system that had been balanced on a lot of government funding in the earlier, riskier stages. Eventually the marketing got so unbalanced people didn't realize how much the system was more complex than the marketing and voted for people that decided it was a "free market" idea to smash the government funding for the hard parts of science.
Yeah, this isn't a particularly new idea. Like, most of the risk in pharma is on testing, and there's so much waste in spinning up plants for drugs that may not even succeed in Phase III. So I'd like to split that out.
The market is there to risk money in the world of imperfect information trying to predict what would be good to pursue. That is one of the hardest parts of the process, but it's not even made your list.
Fundamentally, the incentives of society and private companies are misaligned with respect to healthcare. Society wants a cheap, simple treatment that basically works forever (like sterilising vaccines). However, because of how the patent system works, companies want a treatment that is recurring, and can easily be patented multiple times.
Because of this, so much money goes into lifestyle treatments for the rich world, and not enough into re-using things that can't be patented. I think this is a giant waste of resources, hence my suggestions above.
You pay double the OECD average, and more per person for healthcare than the Swiss - and that's only counting the publicly funded parts!
You're ok with that?
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
https://cpsa.ca/news/statement-william-viliam-makis-not-lice...
Rebecca was not only an amazing programmer, but a true hacker from the get go. From what I understand she managed to achieve what she did without even a high school diploma -- a real natural talent.
I first really learned of her from the ANTIC podcast [1] in 2015 and was just kind of blown away by this cool, intelligent, creative and humble human being.
I'm personally sad she's gone, but also really...proud? to see how she went out, with tons of witty communications to her friends and associates in her recognizable voice.
To have such a positive impact in the world is something worth achieving.
1 - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-64-rebecca-h...
Am I crazy or does that sentence have, I don't know how to explain it, the 'rhythm' of a joke? Feels like accidental rhyming, a mark of bad writing?
Feeling a bit of regret. I feel like I made a poor first impression on Rebecca when I first met her a few years back at VCF East. I saw her again recently but was suffering from severe undiagnosed sleep apnea so much so that I was practically asleep at the event. I didn't know about the cancer. Thought I would have another chance. This is happening more and more in my life. :/
Let us cherish all the great moments that she helped bring to us.
Go visit a pulmonologist and get a diagnosis. Getting one and starting on a CPAP was life-changing for me.
RIP
Cherish every sunrise.
I played BT1, BT2, and BT3 for hours and hours.
“We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!“
Such a legend. RIP.
condolenses to her family and closest friends.
https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/index...
[0] https://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001166.... (no, I've no idea why they're behind the wrong subdomain certificate)
because there's currently a black strip up but there's no articles about a death on the first page
This article is not on the front page so it took me a while to find what the black bar was referring to.
Sheesh, the mobile web is really predatory. Good that I don’t use it much.
Without such evidence your post reads more like propagandizing a death for political purposes than an honest argument.
Do you have any evidence that it wasn't?
I honestly don't know if earlier detection was possible, or would have helped her out or not. What I can tell you is that given the state of health care in this country, you can bet that my default assumption would be "yes" until proven otherwise.
Starting with the assumption of "no" gives our system more slack than it deserves.
Most types of cancers are not routinely screened for. The post says that the cancer was in her liver and lungs, and neither liver cancer nor lung cancer are routinely screened for (lung cancer screenings are recommended for people with a history of heavy smoking).
> What I can tell you is that given the state of health care in this country, you can bet that my default assumption would be "yes" until proven otherwise.
This is clearly a politically-motivated point rather than one grounded in science or reality. Cancer screening in the US is generally more aggressive, not less aggressive, than in other developed countries. For example, the US has historically recommended annual mammograms starting at age 40, while Europe doesn't start until age 50 and only does them every two years. US guidelines are to start screening for colon cancer at age 45 (c.f. 50 in most of Europe), and the US uses a much more invasive (and costlier) approach to colon cancer screening on top of the age gap.
If anything the US probably overinvests in cancer screening. The evidence in favor of starting mammograms at 40 is extremely dubious, as is the evidence for invasive and expensive colonoscopies (standard US practice) over fecal matter tests (standard European practice) for colon cancer screening.
If you have got cancer in your liver and lung then those are probably metastases, and most often the original cancer is in the colon.
> the evidence for invasive and expensive colonoscopies (standard US practice) over fecal matter tests (standard European practice) for colon cancer screening [is extremely dubious].
Fecal matter tests will tell if you have got a tumour and that tumour is bleeding. But not all colon tumours bleed. Colon cancer can be a silent killer, that often goes without symptoms for years until it has metastasised and become terminal.
A colonoscopy will tell if you if you have got a polyp — an early pre-stage of cancer. And a polyp can be removed right then and there during the procedure with a tiny wire-loop or claw at the end of the instrument — and then you're safe.
I recommend everyone who is 45 y/o or older to get a colonoscopy every ten years. That is how long a polyp takes to develop into a tumour .. for normal people. Myself, I have Lynch syndrome, so I have had to start earlier and get a colonoscopy every year. I had my fourteenth two days ago.
A COLONOSCOPY IS NO BIG DEAL. It is not invasive, it is not sexual, it is not demeaning. Everyone is professional, interested in your intestine, not your butt. It does usually not hurt, and if it does it is because of gas, as there are no other types of sensory nerves in the colon. If you are otherwise healthy, it is not dangerous. You can get it done it medicated, or even sedated if you want. I usually do it without any such drugs. The worst part is not the procedure but the prep — because laxatives taste bad. But if you are healthy and ask for it, a doctor could give you a stronger laxative that you don't have to drink as much of.
Screening is good. Do it!
> An invasive procedure is one where purposeful/deliberate access to the body is gained via an incision, percutaneous puncture, where instrumentation is used in addition to the puncture needle, or instrumentation via a natural orifice. It begins when entry to the body is gained and ends when the instrument is removed, and/or the skin is closed. Invasive procedures are performed by trained healthcare professionals using instruments, which include, but are not limited to, endoscopes, catheters, scalpels, scissors, devices and tubes.
[1], emphasis added.
> A medical procedure that invades (enters) the body, usually by cutting or puncturing the skin or by inserting instruments into the body.
[2], emphasis added
> An invasive procedure is one in which the body is "invaded", or entered by a needle, tube, device, or scope.
[3], emphasis added
Is it a big deal? Maybe not to you, maybe to other people. Is it better than a much cheaper (and not invasive) FOBT? Questionable.
NordICC [4] found an 18% reduction in colon cancer incidence after 10 years with a colonoscopy screening program, but no statistically significant reduction in mortality (either colon cancer or all-cause). Hardcastle et al. [5] found no reduction in colon cancer incidence but a 15% reduction in colon cancer mortality after 7.8 years with a FOBT screening program.
Everyone's gungho about evidence-based medicine until the evidence fails to support their preferred procedures.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6678000/
[2] https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...
[3] https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002384.htm
That's a recipe for healthcare inflation. There are endless unproven tests and treatments.
Should its businesses afford that out of their profits?
Since households can’t afford eggs, much less health care costs, at the wages paid by businesses; so this decision is up to firms rather than households to decide. Founders, your input would especially be appreciated here.
It's normal to be upset about the circumstances under which someone died, and to be angry if you believe it was avoidable. Under the five stages model, this would be bargaining and anger.
Whether you're right or not, it doesn't matter - this is not the time or place to bring this up.