jbeninger

Wait, you have a conscious experience?

I made the same mistake having worked with URL encoding for so long. " " is 20...in hex.

I've been playing through Dark Souls recently, and I think it captures the ambient presence discussed in the article very well. You see ghosts of other players flickering in and out of existence. You can communicate with others by leaving messages, and you can view their deaths. A bunch of pools of blood left by multiple player deaths will draw your attention and warn you subtly that there's danger ahead.

But the actual multiplayer is constrained. Your offers of help can be accepted by anyone. You can be periodically invaded. There's no communication other than by movement and gestures.

It does feel like the gaming equivalent of sitting alone with other people. You're aware of them, can interact if you so choose, but your experience is still your own.

I had the same thought. Media queries to support different... media seems like the exact proper use case.

When you click a link labelled "world's fluffiest pancakes", do you want to read 16 boring pages of stories about someone's grandma before you get to, you know, the thing you actually clicked on?

Sounds human enough to me

"Do responsive things. I didn't spend most of my early career convincing clients to let us do a responsive website just for you to serve me up a boring layout that kicks down to your mobile layout as soon as you are less than 1200px."

Can anyone elaborate on this? I feel like I'm missing some context because a desktop layout that kicks down to a mobile layout at a breakpoint sounds like the essence of doing responsive things.

Obviously there are a ton of other aspects of responsiveness, but specifically calling out the layout change makes me think I misunderstood something.

A character asks that question in Hyperion, by another sci-fi author (Dan Simmons).

The answer he arrived at was that God was not testing Abraham. He was allowing Abraham to test God. When God stayed his hand at the last moment, he knew that he'd met a god worth following.

(I'm not religious myself, but I did find this to be an interesting-enough interpretation to parrot it back to you on a web forum)

I'm not sure "get better at handling interruptions" is possible. If I'm juggling a dozen ideas in my head and am interrupted, that tower is going to crumble regardless. If you're suggesting I rebuild my methods of developing from the ground up to avoid that mindset, that's a huge ask. I'm not convinced it's even possible. I'm able to muddle through a task with regular interruptions, but I'll be more likely to make mistakes and it will take longer. There's a world of difference between what I accomplish in an "office" day vs a "coding" day.

I think the article has it right. Dedicate some "office hours" to being interrupted, but recognize that some people are far more productive during long uninterrupted periods.