NackerHughes

"Miss the old web?" The author wasn't even born then.

Don't worry about understanding the entire codebase just yet. Instead, try to understand some specific parts of it to begin with. As you work with different bits of the code you'll gradually form a mental 'map' of how the whole thing fits together.

Start by trying making small changes, e.g. make the guns faster, or make the player jump higher. Look for where that code is that does that thing.

You might be taken on a bit of a journey, finding the definition of a function, then the function calls within that function and the variables passed to them, etc. - all the way along you'll be discovering how various other things are done within the game engine, and the general layout/structure of the codebase overall, as well as plenty of general programming concepts that will be useful anywhere.

Do this enough times and you'll gradually build a familiarity with the engine, and programming in general. Then if there's something you want to do that's in a part of the codebase you're not familiar with, you'll be more able to 'dive in' and find where it is in the code, and you'll be more confident that you can read code you're not familiar with it and be able to figure out what it does.

I can only speak from my experience from when I was just starting out learning to code (17 years ago!), adding and tweaking various features in Cube Engine and its sequel Sauerbraten, eventually moving onto Stepmania. Stepmania was a MUCH bigger codebase than Cube/Sauer (probably still not as big as Quake 3 though!) and the stuff I picked up modding those two was invaluable for working with Stepmania.

This is just Google Gemini with a vibecoded front end, isn't it.

> The moment I entered the room, the Dean just started shouting at me.

> while we were leaving, the Security Officer saw my phone was recording. and this is where all hell broke loose.

> one of the security guys just held me. and started being rough with me. like pushing me around and shit.

> Everyone was shouting at me, i felt like I was being harrassed at this point, and honestly, it's a little embarissing, but i just got overwhelmed. like with all this shit. I started crying, literally balling my eyes out.

> Then the dean called me to his office. To his credit, like i guess seeing me cry and be so sad, the dean became really really nice.

> to the dean's credit, like half an hour later, he literally came to my room, to check up on me and that i was good. like that's really nice of him, he didnt have to do that.

Textbook case of abuse. Scream at a child who's smaller than you, don't let him get a word in edgeways, physically assault him when he attempts to hold you accountable, then when he finally crumbles, act all sweet and sugary like you've done him a favour.

The dean is the real asshole in this story. It's psychopathic abusers like that who need to be removed from educational institutions. Places where they can wield their power like a weapon, abusing it against people who they know can't fight back and give them what they really deserve.

And will the writers of those posts, who contributed their knowledge to help out their fellow humans, get a fraction of a penny for the hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars of profit the AI corps are making off the backs of their labour? I somehow doubt it.

Seems I'm not the only one either: https://github.com/xyzeva/k-id-age-verifier/issues/7

What it will make go mainstream, and in fact has already started to, is “ChatGPT verified it so it must be OK.”

I have recently become quite fond of goto-based error handling and find it a lot cleaner and more readable than the if-else-mountains you otherwise end up with. I just make sure to leave a comment with a link to xkcd.com/292 so anyone else reading it knows I'm aware of what I'm doing. Now with this URL trick I can do both in one line. :)

So what, exactly, is the difference between this and internet handles? In fact, isn't this worse?

Yes, and if even these people can tell that AI generated stuff is godawful and tasteless, that tells you everything you need to know about AI.

The customer “ooh”s and “aah”s at said fancy animations running on the salesman’s top of the line macbook pro and is lured in, only realising too late that they’ve been bitten in the ass by the enormous amount of bloat that makes it run like a potato on any computer that costs less than four thousand dollars.

And US/EU laws are written by clueless bureaucrats whose most recent experience with technology is not even an electric typewriter.

What’s your point?

It really won’t. It will steal your website’s content and regurgitate it back out in a mangled form to any lazy prompt that gets prodded into it. GPT bots are a perfect example of the parasites you speak of that have destroyed any possibility of an open web.

With how they've been in recent years it's almost as if they're trying to be inept competition, as if they're being paid by Google to suck - in fact, that is all but established by now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526498 https://archive.is/9bHTi (archived version of github issue linked in above thread) https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/24/opencart_vulnerabilit... https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues/12947#issuecomme...

Or have they just added more padding around everything, more wasted screen space, more laggy animations, all the while making routine operations like, oh I don't know, checking and replying to email more unpleasant and niggling by the day?

edit: some wider-range searching suggests it might be Spanish for “kicked”.

White text on a black background in print is indeed harder to read due to the issue of ink bleeding, but on a computer screen it is so much easier on the eyes.