Love this. I have a young one I am thinking of letting get involved in the Minecraft scene (I think far less exploitative than Roblox?). How does one get started? What console are you using? Or PC? How do I enable mods? And who is Mojang?
Generally, minecraft creation is less exploitative than roblox, since mojang (the creators of the game) has no hand in your creations. Generally, a young one's creations will be "maps"/"worlds" (places where you can run around and play etc) and "skins" (how your character looks). AFAIK, minecraft mod creation is a lot more involved than it is for roblox, but I only have a very cursory knowledge of roblox.
Using mods will depend if they are playing the legacy pc version ("Java Edition"), which has much more mod support or the newer cross-platform version ("Bedrock Edition"), where mods are generally limited to things that are approved by mojang (I have a lot less experience with bedrock so don't quote me on that). Generally, you will find mods are either "forge" or "fabric", which are the main two types of framework that you can make them with. I think fabric is the more "modern" version, but both are constantly being updated for the latest version. They have their own modloaders, but you can use programs that manage your mods for you, such as the modrinth launcher or the curseforge launcher. Once you have one of those installed, you generally just drop the mods into the mods folder and assuming you have all the frameworks and versions correct, they should just work. You'll probably want to google for more detailed tutorials on adding mods if it's your first time, as a HN comment is going to be too short to contain them haha.
Generally, making full mods is going to involve java programming, so a decent grasp of java will help a lot there, and there are lots of tutorials for it online as well.
Agreed on Roblox. BUT it has Roblox Studio, which seems like a Unity-light. I taught my son to add different shapes, move them around, scale and rotate etc, so he could build his own obstacle courses. I think if you go down the Roblox route, make sure to focus on creation.
Just be careful that you are aware of roblox being a bit... eh about protecting its creators. This video (https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ) and its successor are about as much as I am aware of the situation, so it might have changed since they were put out
There are two versions of Minecraft: Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Java Edition is only on PCs/Mac, while Bedrock is on phones, tablets and consoles. Java Edition is the original and I think more customizable in general, a bit more hard core. We just have both.
We use a special launcher for Java Edition called "Prism Launcher" which lets you handle different versions of the game, installing mods etc. It's really taught him important concepts like "if you install 134 mods, incompatibilities will break the game", and general debugging, like, install one mod at a time and revert it something doesn't work. I prefer PCs in general because it's more likely to lead to an understanding for computers.
I'd start with the base game! Give you kid a chance to familiarize themselves with the core mechanics, particularly redstone, then look into command blocks and resource packs. These are fully vanilla mechanics, no need to fiddle with installing mods (which differs based on platform/version), but are extremely powerful!
Yes, first of all just try the game and see if it sticks. Once there is obsessive interest, you can try to guide it towards mentally stimulating ends. I don't know if I'd recommend YouTube for english native speakers, but for kids like my son, learning English from YouTube is a plus. There are lots of shitty YouTubers just goofing around, but there are some good ones like Pixlriffs (Minecraft Survival Guide), Shalz and Mumbo Jumbo that focus on building things and exploring all aspects of the game and different mods. As an example, my son learned about crop rotation from Pixlriffs, because apparently its a mechanic in the game. Can't be mad at that!
Agree 100%. Mentorship from more experienced colleagues can save an enormous amount of time in pain by pointing out someone is going in the wrong direction very early on. Mentors can also expose a mentees to “unknown unknowns,” which a mentee might not otherwise know that they need to investigate. I agree that “learning how to learn” is more valuable, but that’s not to say that mentors or more experienced engineers have nothing to provide of value.
You say you agree, but your points are opposite of his points.
Watching a senior is not a senior pointing you to pitfalls, or unknown unknowns.
The parent argues that although there is value in being near a senior, all the actions lay with the junior. This is a transition people need to make when they leave school and enter work.
I am not making points to expand on how I agree.. I am a elaborating on the benefits of having more senior colleagues around. The benefit is not that they watch you and correct you. Indeed, the mentee must drive their own learning. The really valuable part of having a more senior engineer around is not that you just magically learn by osmosis, but that you can ask them questions as they come up _and then level-up rapidly._ That’s the context my points were more meant for.
> [In fact most companies have such opaque issue boards that as a customer I get so frustrated when I find a small issue or bug and have to spend like 50 hours back and forth to prove it’s a bug and actually get a ticket put in the tracker.]
Agree wholeheartedly. Back & forth emails, screenshots, Q&A (what version are you on?), etc. The number of times I make it to checkout on the last step and something breaks on a certain version of a browser
Probably there should be an independent body that oversees postmortems on tech issues, with the ability to suggest changes. This is what airlines face during crash investigations and often new rules are put in place (e.g., don’t let the shift manager self-certify his own work in the incident where the pilot’s window popped off). How this would look like with software companies, and what the bar is for being subject to this rigor I don’t know (I suspect not for a Candy Crush outage though).
In general, the biggest problem I see with late stage capitalism, and a lack of accountability in general, is that given the right incentives people will “fuck things up” faster than you can stop them. For example, say CrowdStrike was skirting QA - what’s my incentive as an individual employee versus the incentive of an executive at the company? If the exec can’t tell the difference between good QA and bad QA, but can visually see the accounting numbers go up when QA is underfunded, he’s going to optimize for stock price. And as an IC there’s not much you can do unless you’re willing to fight the good fight day in and day out. But when management repeatedly communicates they do not reward that behavior, and indeed may not care at all about software quality over a 5 year time horizon, what do you do? The key lies in finding ways to convince executives or short of that holding them to account like you say.
I've commented on this before, but in this case I think it starts to fall onto the laps of the individual employees themselves by way of licensing, or at least some sort of certification system. Sure, you could skirt a test here or there, but then you'd only be shorting yourself when shit hits the fan. It'd be your license and essentially your livelihood on the line.
"Proper" engineering disciplines have similar systems like the Professional Engineer cert via the NSPE that requires designs be signed off. If you had the requirement that all software engineers (now with the certification actually bestowing them the proper title of 'engineer') sign off on their design, you could prevent the company from just finding someone else more unscrupulous to push that update or whatever through. If the entirety of the department or company is employing properly certificated people, they'd be stuck actually doing it the right way.
That's their incentive to do it correctly: sign your name to it, or lose your license, and just for drama's sake, don't collect $200, directly to jail. For the companies, employ properly licensed engineers, or risk unlimited downside liability when shit goes sideways, similar to what might happen if an engineering firm built a shoddy bridge.
Would a firm that peddles some sort of CRUD app need to go through all of this? If it handles toxic data like payments or health data or other PII, sure. Otherwise, probably not, just like you have small contracting outfits that build garden sheds or whatever being a bit different than those that maintain, say, cooling systems for nuclear plants. Perhaps a law might be written to include companies that work in certain industries or business lines to compel them to do this.
This is greyed out, but I tend to agree with the sentiment that there’s a right way and a wrong way to approach these “EV” questions. OP was a bit harsh with the stupid comment, and for SWEs EV understanding is not usually a critical thing, but ultimately you’re being asked about the probability and the ability to make good decisions. Trading firms make use of this when hiring traders (most famously Jane Street and also SIG); The thinking is that if someone makes bad decisions with toy games, and their thought process is not analytical, they’re going to make for a bad trader, not making good decisions with millions of dollars on the line. A good example of something that would rule out a trader is: You can flip a coin, if you win you get $1m, if you lose you lose $1m. Would you play? The EV is zero, but the question is about bankroll management and disaster avoidance. As an individual the downside risk of a $1m loss (usually) significantly outweighs the upside of a $1m gain.
This friction is often invisible. This cost is not measurable. Hard work needs to go into measuring developer productivity, helping business people understand, and then make that number go up. The second part is perhaps the hardest as if you don’t do that you might not be employed long enough to do number 3.
One my team’s “goals” (which we did not pick) is to increase our velocity. My coworkers and I didn’t really discuss it but we’ve all started adding extra points to every ticket.
Surely this is an erosion in public trust, but if you’ve ever been in a busy public toilet that smells horrendous, you know from experience that maintaining these public toilets is no easy feat. At the same time, I agree with the thrust of the article that they are a civic good & necessity.
I live in the UK. I use the “Radar Key Scheme” for both my son and myself. The Radar Key opens handicapped toilets around the country that are otherwise locked. I asked my GP about a referral for this and they knew nothing about it. In the end I just bought one online. Bizarre. I have a disability that’s not visible, I’m otherwise healthy and relatively privileged, but being unable to find a toilet to use when my bladder feels like it is going to explode makes me feel like a wild animal - unable to fulfill the most base need in a culturally acceptable way - terrible feeling.
> The Radar Key opens handicapped toilets around the country that are otherwise locked.
I’ve never heard of this type of thing in the USA. Handicap stalls, if available, are just next to the rest of the stalls in any given location. They’re usually a bit bigger to accommodate a wheel chair, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a special entry mechanism.
It's just a physical key. Like the keys for operating train equipment or fire safety they're not intended to prevent malicious access, they're a social signal - this is for people who need it. You're not clever for figuring out how to abuse it, you're just a bad person.
The bad person is the one who decided to lock and downsize public toilets. All the arguments about taxes are about money for public good that market can't solve, well where is it?
Living in a country where it's the norm, the concept of (any) locked bathrooms is wild. When travelling I always always find restricted access (either by key, or payment) public facilities extremely jarring.
A lot of newer toilets in the USA are single occupancy rooms for families and disabled. Of course, this also makes them easier to use for drugs and camping, so locking them down in urban areas is pretty important.
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