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I feel the same way, although it's even worse with Zachtronic games (like SpaceChem for instance). At first I enjoy them because "it's just like coding" but the
by simias 6y ago
I feel the same way, although it's even worse with Zachtronic games (like SpaceChem for instance). At first I enjoy them because "it's just like coding" but then after an hour or so I think "well, it's just like coding" and I realize that I could be doing something more productive. I guess it must be like playing Guitar Hero if you're a professional guitarist.
I think these games are great at teaching people about concurrent programming, race conditions and locking though.
- xyzal 6y agoAnecdote: I got my first programming job while in the middle of a SpaceChem run (previously, I was just a hobby coder). I quit the game in a few days after starting that job, as I found it required the same "brain juices" I had already depleted at the office.
- jkhdigital 6y agoYes, my greatest lament about life is that “brain juice” appears to be a limited resource
- barkingcat 6y agomaybe replenish "brain juice" by drinking it from another brain?
- thih9 6y agoIf you're into that kind of metaphors, you may like the game 'Carrion'; warning, lots of pixel blood. It launched not long ago and does a great job in creating an 80s horror atmosphere. At the same time it's a relatively easy metroidvania platformer, so I find it a genuinely good activity to recover "brain juice" after coding.
- pm90 6y agoThank you for recommending this. I just bought the game and I’m most certainly going to be spending a few weekends on this : )
- hutzlibu 6y agoBut I believe, there are different types of "brain juice". I run out of the one required for nasty bug finding, very soon, but when that one is gone (and after a short break to clear the mind) I can go on creating new code/architecture for hours.
- jkhdigital 6y agoI didn’t really see these nuances until I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed stimulant medication. It basically gives me a large tank of “rainbow juice” that works for any task and lasts 4-6 hours. Going back to the parent comment, one remarkable effect of this is that I rarely desire to play video games like I used to. It seemed like I always had enough juice for video games but rarely for other life obligations, but with the rainbow juice I am just as motivated to do all that other stuff as I am to play video games.
- felbane 6y agoI see comments like this and seriously start to wonder if I'm an almost 40 year old man with undiagnosed ADHD. If only my insurance covered mental health...
- Aaronstotle 6y agoSeeing this comment makes me think that I should consider talking to a doctor about ADHD. I can't even focus on playing a video game for more than 30 minutes most of the time.
- 6y ago
- dentemple 6y agoSometimes referred to as Spoon Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
- joquarky 6y agoWe've been calling it mana among my group.
- dwighttk 6y agoWhat is it?
- kortex 6y agoI'd tell you all about it, but I'm currently all out of it ;) Look into Ego Depletion. There's academic disagreement over just how "consumable" willpower is. My assessment of SOTA is: - ego/willpower is finite/depletable - Most people have more or less the same amount of it as the average. People with "more willpower" typically are more efficient with it - non-neurotypicals and those that "don't fit in society" (ADHD, ASD, bipolar, trans, nonbinary, anxiety, OCD) often spend much willpower on "passing" - it's linked to everything from blood sugar levels, insulin levels, brain blood flow, dopamine levels, D1/D2 activation ratios, and probably gut microbiome
- DC-3 6y agoIt helps to balance out the stress on different faculties. If you write code for 14 hours a day you're gonna burnout but if you balance a variety of activities it is possible to be very productive while not feeling exhausted.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoEmotional, mental and physical energy are all limited resources.
- brianwawok 6y agoKind of how all games are. I could sit here and get virtual levels and virtual money... or go raise my actual human fitness level, or go work on my actual business for actual money. Games are an easy win to feed you nuggets of feeling like you did stuff, but a poor substitute for real life.
- nico_h 6y agoBut there is only so much time that you can be effective at running a business or running. Some people need to relax from the stress of work and tiredness of exercise by playing games for example.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tachyonbeam 6y agoBut is it all that relaxing to build and run a complex virtual factory? Sometimes if the level of difficulty is too high it can become stressful. I understand that there's satisfaction in it. That satisfaction can be hard to get at work sometimes. At work, you can be asked to work on things you don't like, that sometimes feel even more pointless than a game. Part of the reason why I have programming side-projects at home is because they're an outlet to get the satisfaction of building software the way I want to.
- devonkim 6y agoThe consequences of messing up a make believe factory is essentially nothing except one’s own time loss. The consequences of messing up a real factory are obviously substantial. What games or side projects let us do sometimes is to explore and enter a more diffuse mode of thought which has some tangential benefits to other activities. Spending too much time “being productive” can be counterproductive because one can get tunnel vision too busy executing tasks instead of reimagining or optimizing those tasks. Too much time questioning the work and nothing materially important gets done either.
- 6y ago
- chris_st 6y agoI found with "Opus Magnum" that, yeah, it was programming of a sort, but since it was all these wacky physical devices, that it was enough unlike coding that it switched back to being a fun puzzle. But, yeah, with "TIS-1000" it was just programming, and sort of unnecessarily (and unpleasantly) difficult programming at that.
- drzaiusx11 6y agoI really enjoyed TIS-1000, possibly because of the constraints the machine and assembly language posed. Finding clever ways to work within those constraints was fun. Same sort of fun I get when writing 6502 ASM for ROM hacks on my Atari 2600. In my day job at the time the game came out I was doing node.js microservices. So it was refreshing to work at the bit level again.
- dgrin91 6y agoWow never saw SpaceChem before. Thanks for the unintended recommendation :)
- simias 6y agoI hope I didn't sound too negative, it's a good game and can be quite a bit of fun.