Readit NewsIt’s really unhealthy behavior.
But you really need to step back once in a while and contemplate, if the thing you're doing is really worthwhile.
One of the most precious resources is time. I didn't appreciate this insight a lot while I was young. But as I grew older I needed to be more careful how you I was spending it. In this regard like I like the saying "youth is wasted on the young". But this also enables you to be more focused in your approach. Fail fast is a lot better than spending years on a problem with bo end in sight
Oh JSON.
For those unfamiliar with the reason here, it’s that JSON parsers cannot be relied upon to treat numbers properly. Is 4723476276172647362476274672164762476438 a valid JSON number? Yes, of course it is. What will a JSON parser due with it? Silently truncate it to a 64-bit or 63-bit integer, or a float, probably or if you’re very lucky emit an error (a good JSON decoder written in a sane language like Common Lisp would of course just return the number, but few of us are so lucky).
So the only way to reliably get large integers into and out of JSON is to encode them as something else. Base64-encoded big-endian bytes is not a terrible choice. Silently doing the wrong thing is the root of many security errors, so it not wrong to treat every number in the protocol this way. Of course, then one loses the readability of JSON.
JSON is better than XML, but it really isn’t great. Canonical S-expressions would have been far preferable, but for whatever reason the world didn’t go that way.
Probably there are types not every parser/language can accept, but at least it could throw a meaningful error instead of guessing or even truncating the value.
What makes this interesting is that the difference between C code an Rust code is not something you can just ignore. You will lose developers who simply don't want or can spend the time to get into the intricacies of a new language. And you will temporarily have a codebase where 2 worlds collide.
I wonder how in retrospect they will think about the decisions they made today.
The only problem I have is that I don't use it very much and if I do, I'm just overwhelmed by all the effects and parameters. I'm sure there's great value there... But, if you don't know exactly what you're looking for? Well, be prepared to click around for ages finding something cool. I have no idea how to improve that, but I find it annoying.
It would be also great for the effects to not be destructive. Like using it with filter layers. But unfortunately this seems not to be possible.
For almost all tech companies - hell, almost all companies in the modern world - customer abuse is a first-class strategy. Some push it further than others, some are more blatant than others. It's probably not about them being insanely out-of-touch with what people want, but about them miscalculating what people will tolerate. Microsoft seems to be willing to push things a little further because, why wouldn't they? They got people to install Vista, then 7, then 10, then 11, all increasingly abusive.
I remember a time, when I set specific firewall rules for each application. A time where I would never allow to share my location. A time where I would never link my google account to other services. But as I grew older I stopped caring because I have other stuff to do.
The problem is, that those companies have time on their side. They can do whatever they want, back out, constantly rebrand stuff and confuse their users until we eventually give up. And at some point a large part of the population stops caring, because it's a fight, which is very hard to win. I hate it, but I have not the strength, time and will to push back.
What I struggled with are: 1) Interesting site design, 2) custom functionality through plugins, 3) making it easy to add pages and blog posts with a nice editor.
I'm glad open source solutions exist, but I swear, they always have drawbacks. Either they are code heavy, plugins are out of date, maintenance takes a lot of time or there is no way to easily design a page.
So for Wordpress I bought Oxygen, for which you can still buy a lifetime license for, and oh my god, even I can make a nice, responsive website without touching code. It's such a game changer.
I think lots of people avoid wordpress because of security. But that is not primarily a wordpress fault. Linux & PHP complicates it a lot. And I'm sure those other open source projects have severe bugs, too, but nobody knows or talks about them.
What could bring down wordpress, imho, are expensive license fees for plugins. Who wants to spend 50 to 100 bucks per year and per page for a builder plugin? Everyone wants one, but no one wants to pay yearly. And it seems that all plugin makers are starting to go that way.
For games like Starcraft 2 with replay functionality, you could probably record/use several matches and test that the behaviour matches the recorded behaviour. If you can make your game have a replay feature you can make use of this, even if you don't ship that replay code.
For things like CYOA type games or decision trees, you could have a logging mechanism that prints out the choices, player stats, hidden stats, etc. and then have a way to run through the decisions, then check the actual log output against the expected output. -- I've done something similar when writing parsers by printing out the parse tree (for AST parser APIs) or the parse events (for reader/SAX parser APIs).
I'm sure there are other techniques for testing other parts of the system. For example, you could test the rendering by saving the render to an image and comparing it against an expected image. IIRC, Firefox does something similar for some systems like the SVG renderer and the HTML paint code.
Various of these features (replay, screenshots) are useful to have in the main game.
But recording and replaying matches? Taking screenshots and comparing the output? Just think about it: If you have recorded a match and change the hitpoints of a single creature, the test could possibly fail. And then? Re-record the match?
The same applies to screenshots: What happens if models, sprites or colors change?
In my experience, tests like this are annoying, because:
1) They take a long time to create and adjust/recreate.
2) They fail for minor reasons.
3) It takes time to understand, what such tests even measure, if someone else made them.
4) You need a large, self made framework to support such tests.
5) It takes a long time to run them, because they are time dependent.
6) They hinder you to make large changes.
7) It's cheaper to make some low wage game testers play your game. Or better, make the game early access and let 1000s of players test your game for free, while even making money out of them
What really should be done is to disallow proposals, which are kinda the same. Once a mass surveillance proposal like this is defeated, it shouldn't be allowed to be constantly rebranded and reintroduced. We need a firewall in our legislative process that automatically rejects any future attempts at scanning private communications.