
Doom as a tool for system administration (1999) - ColinWright
https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
======
TipVFL
Hah, I remember this. My favorite thing about it is the fact that vital
processes could end up killing each other and crash your system.

To me, that takes this from stupid, to gloriously stupid.

------
abraae
So wonderful - includes features that sound eminently sensible yet are not
present (I imagine) in any modern tools:

> A new sysadmin can be given less power by providing her with a smaller
> weapon. A rank beginner may not be given a weapon at all and be forced to
> attack processes with her bare hands. It would take a foolhardy player to
> attack a room full of monsters, just as a newbie should not kill a bunch of
> important processes. A more experienced sysadmin would have time to stop a
> newbie who is trying to kill the wrong process. The real work could be left
> to those with the big guns. The truly great sysadmins could have BFGs.

------
bb88
Ha, I'm old. I remember seeing this when it originally showed up on shashdot.

~~~
rcarmo
Same here. It was the dawn of the dial-up age, and we were loading funky IPX
device drivers and stringing coax to play this between apartments...

~~~
hvs
Small nitpick: this was not the dawn of the dial-up age. This was the end of
1999. I had been dialing up for at least 5 years at this point and I'm sure
there where many who had it before me.

~~~
ISL
I'm a child of the early eighties. I cannot recall a time that there was not a
functioning 1200 baud (or faster) modem in our house.

~~~
karmakaze
Must have been nice. In '82 I got a third-party 600 baud (nonstandard, can't
recall the brand) modem which was better than 300 and Atari hadn't come out
with a 1200 yet.

------
fareesh
> Certain processes are vital to the computer's operation and should not be
> killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by
> csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and
> my session was abruptly terminated.

My favourite part

------
irq-1
From the same person: Adaptive Radio

[https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/radio/index.html](https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/radio/index.html)

> It can be hard to listen to music in the office. ... Adaptive Radio is an
> alternative approach in which users just indicate what songs they _don 't_
> want to listen to, and the system will try to play MP3s that are not
> disliked by anyone.

~~~
Hendrikto
Such a cool idea in principle... I would be the party pooper who blacklists
everything though. I just can‘t concentrate with music playing, which is kind
of funny, because construction noice, for example, does not nearly distract me
as much.

~~~
thomk
I bet you would like techno:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIvj7Zxogs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIvj7Zxogs)

Or maybe chillhop:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Y8JkHcI3I&index=1&list=PLR...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Y8JkHcI3I&index=1&list=PLRnzGbivJUmGbB-
iS_GkA33QcIed7Sv_I&t=0s)

Give each of those 5 minutes, you may be able to settle into a nice coding
groove. I sleep like a baby to the 1st one.

------
trynewideas
subsequent art:

\- Dockercraft:
[https://github.com/docker/dockercraft](https://github.com/docker/dockercraft)

\- Kubecraft (K8s), a fork of Dockercraft:
[https://github.com/stevesloka/kubecraft](https://github.com/stevesloka/kubecraft)

\- Docker DOOM:
[https://gideonred.com/dockerdoom/](https://gideonred.com/dockerdoom/)

~~~
iforgotpassword
I wonder if there are more such things. Not necessarily for controlling, I can
think of a couple games that would be a great fit for just visualizing stuff.
Trains for I/o, you can vary number of trains, train length and speed to
represent parameters of the io pattern.

~~~
seba_dos1
Check out Logstalgia: [http://logstalgia.io/](http://logstalgia.io/)

------
tempodox
This is refreshingly hilarious. I must admit, using a sawed-off shotgun for
resource management even merely inside a single process already holds a
massive amount of attraction for me. With my track record in C and assembly, I
would be licensed to the most devastating weaponry. So many IT roles
underestimate the importance of good entertainment.

------
gboudrias
Once again, whimsy turns to wisdom when least expected. The very idea is
ludicrous, but the hurdles and lessons learned while trying to be funny are
real. Good read!

------
gnarbarian
Early Gamification.

Similar solutions were also mentioned in "Ready Player One".

I'd love to see more applications of this applied to the more tedious and
boring aspects of system administration.

~~~
squarefoot
Bubblefishymon. Not a game, but it gives funny but very functional visual
appearance to system/memory load, which helps a lot to get the system status.
I think discovered it in the late 90s or early 2k as a couple Windowmaker
dockapps which later merged into a single one which was also ported to
Gkrellm, and still use it under Xfce.
[http://pigeond.net/bfm/](http://pigeond.net/bfm/)

------
afpx
Ahhh ... the good old days before money got in the way

------
daddosi
I was pondering flow charts as a superior way to visualize a programs uhh flow
(compared to text)

Then it struck me that humans have amazing spatial memory. The hypothesis is
this: A 3d representation (if done right) should make familiarizing the human
with some code a process of minutes rather than hours or days.

------
hjek
The PsDoom version that is linked to on the page doesn't work.

Here's an actively maintained fork: [https://github.com/orsonteodoro/psdoom-
ng1](https://github.com/orsonteodoro/psdoom-ng1)

------
dang
Many previous discussions:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Doom%20as%20a%20tool%20for%20s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Doom%20as%20a%20tool%20for%20system%20administration&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
digi_owl
And these days "we" manage containers in Minecraft...

------
womd
Awesome! I Love it

