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If you're going to make this comparison, you need to do it right. You want to describe vividly the glass-cannon power that magicians painstakingly front-load y

If you're going to make this comparison, you need to do it right. You want to describe vividly the glass-cannon power that magicians painstakingly front-load years and years of study and practice in order to earn. Systems of magic each have distinct feelings. Flashy elemental battle-magic or musty, slow-building necromancy? Physical-object-focused enchantment or natural, sometimes creepy druidry? What's the end goal? Eternal life? Cowing your enemies? Subverting political orders? Fathoming the unfathomable? Just calling software tools spells is just so... lazy.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
Sometimes you don't want to engage in a battle, or raise an army of the undead. Sometimes you just want your tower swept and mopped.
vec 9y ago
It shouldn't be that hard, either I write some words in an unpronounceable, inhuman tongue. I speak these words to a special stone covered in tiny, intricate runes too small for the eye to see and animated by bottled lightning. If either the words are the runes are off by even a single stroke, then nothing happens. But if I get it exactly right, then I can see through eyes which are not my own. I can communicate across countless leagues as easily as across the room. I can bind daemons to watch over the world around me and act on my behalf. I can gaze with godlike clarity over the past, and even discern shapes and motions in the clouds of the future. I can bind my work to an inanimate physical object and give it false life under my command. We teach these Arts to small children, and often use them to show how cute our pets are to one another. It's so easy and so commonplace in our world that we've ceased to register it as Strange. But computers still let us do real, honest to goodness Magick and anyone who tells you differently isn't paying attention.
egjerlow 9y ago
Illusion magic: Game programming Evocation: Cracking/pentesting Abjuration: Cybersecurity Conjuration: UI programming Divination: Data science/forecasting Transmutation: Backend developer Necromancy: Sysadmin Enchantment: Facebook/Google/Amazon/ad industry
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  I'd call Enchantment hardware hacking / Arduino. If anything the advertising industry is Psionics. I'd slot game programming under Conjuration and all of front-end, including UI, as Illusion.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

Sometimes you don't want to engage in a battle, or raise an army of the undead. Sometimes you just want your tower swept and mopped.

vec 9y ago

It shouldn't be that hard, either I write some words in an unpronounceable, inhuman tongue. I speak these words to a special stone covered in tiny, intricate runes too small for the eye to see and animated by bottled lightning. If either the words are the runes are off by even a single stroke, then nothing happens. But if I get it exactly right, then I can see through eyes which are not my own. I can communicate across countless leagues as easily as across the room. I can bind daemons to watch over the world around me and act on my behalf. I can gaze with godlike clarity over the past, and even discern shapes and motions in the clouds of the future. I can bind my work to an inanimate physical object and give it false life under my command. We teach these Arts to small children, and often use them to show how cute our pets are to one another. It's so easy and so commonplace in our world that we've ceased to register it as Strange. But computers still let us do real, honest to goodness Magick and anyone who tells you differently isn't paying attention.

egjerlow 9y ago

Illusion magic: Game programming Evocation: Cracking/pentesting Abjuration: Cybersecurity Conjuration: UI programming Divination: Data science/forecasting Transmutation: Backend developer Necromancy: Sysadmin Enchantment: Facebook/Google/Amazon/ad industry

vinceguidry 9y ago
I'd call Enchantment hardware hacking / Arduino. If anything the advertising industry is Psionics. I'd slot game programming under Conjuration and all of front-end, including UI, as Illusion.