7 ms·

Do you really imply that playing the same game over and over again (with some variables but still) is the same as solving programming problems? The game is lit

by kubb 5y ago

Do you really imply that playing the same game over and over again (with some variables but still) is the same as solving programming problems? The game is literally designed to hook you in and make you play one more and one more. You absolutely can autopilot through a game and still win. Don't get me wrong, the guy has a lot of dedication for sure. But playing League all day is really not like coding all day, I don't want anyone to get that impression.

shanehoban 5y ago
Nah, he's right. I play league. Coding all day is much less draining.
- kubb 5y ago
  Except when you're drained you won't have the creativity to solve another programming task. But you will be able to queue up again. It also gets easier the more you play, because you're relying on the same skills that you build up with every match.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    I haven't ever played a MOBA, but fixing bugs (which takes up a significant amount of developer time), seems to be about as rote as playing an RTS (which I have played, albeit almost 20 years ago).
Permit 5y ago
Have you played League of Legends or Dota 2 before? It will be hard to convey the mental/emotional exhaustion that most people feel from playing MOBAs at even a semi-competitive level. In my experience it's a lot different than playing FPS or other games. I have a distinct memory of finishing a game of Dota 2 and realizing that it felt as though I'd just finished a 3 hour exam. I didn't feel happy that we'd won, just relieved. I don't think this will convince you, but perhaps consider being open to the possibility that it genuinely is as difficult as solving most programming problems that we face in our day-to-day work. In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode problems.
- wiseowise 5y ago
  > In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode problems. I have 3k hours in Dota 2. I know exactly what it is and how it works. It's really not. Not even close.
- kubb 5y ago
  Yeah I've played League for a bit. It really does get easier the more you play. By the way, I've just read in the article that Tyler's been on Adderall since first grade, I guess that will help him stay focused.
  - abledon 5y ago
    wow, that explains so much, he usually plays it offlike its only the pre-workout bloodrush hes drinking
- Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
  I've played League of Legends for nearly 10 years. Not to take anything away from Tyler1, because he really goes above and beyond, but it really doesn't take much mental focus or anything really to play it. Programming? It takes focus, you really have to think sometimes. But League? When I'm tired the game plays itself. It just feels like muscle memory. It might take a bit more effort to play at a consistently high level. But I'm pretty sure it's mostly muscle memory for him too. There's very little actual thinking other than the big picture of what objectives to take and I'm sure when he's playing for 20+ hours he's just on autopilot for the majority of the time. To put it into comparison with how little mental power it personally takes me, I like to watch a lot of Anime, that's Japanese animation with English subtitles. I can't watch Anime if I'm tired because keeping track of subtitles and what's on screen actually takes a substantial amount of mental power. But I can bash out 5 games of LoL back to back when I'm equally as tired.
  - MacroChip 5y ago
    There's a difference between "playing the game" and playing the game. I can sit at a chess board and move pieces around and say that chess takes no focus because I chose not to focus
colinmhayes 5y ago
There's a world of difference between playing league casually and competitively. No one at his level of play can autopilot through a game and still win.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  That's not true. The skill disparity between the very top players (100-500), and the rest of the players in the top league is usually very large.
  - 1_player 5y ago
    The point of match-making is playing with people your same level. It doesn't matter what level tyler1 is, he'll be playing against people that will challenge and give him a hard time. You're not matched against people less skilled than you where you can just "relax" and walk it in. When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain there.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      > When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain there Top players hit the ceiling of the MMR system before they hit their skill ceiling. When you get to the very top of a ladder, matchmaking stops working correctly. Partly because the top few players are insanely good compared to everyone else and partly because there are literally not enough people online at any one time for an equal match to be made.
  - seabird 5y ago
    He IS a very top player (solo Challenger, top 200 in 4/5 roles in the game). There's not a chance in hell he's able to go on autopilot at that point, even in slightly lower rank games during his grinds where he has to try and win losing games with a team that's not good enough to help him do it. The only reason he's not playing as a salaried professional is that he's in a bad region to do so and makes more being a personality.
1_player 5y ago
At gunpoint, I'd rather code 12 hours a day than play LoL or CS:GO 12 hours a day. Because programming is less exhausting and my code doesn't insult my mother on VOIP. And I say that as a gamer and esports enthusiast.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  I used to play League...then I found out everyone who played that game had slept with my mother.
tester756 5y ago
I have 5?k hours in LoL around high plat / in previous season low diamond and I'd say that LoL while being different from competitive programming is still exhausting if you want to play it with full focus for a few hours. Of course there's difference between playing ARAMs for fun and tryharding on "relatively competent" ELO where you try to do not commit mistakes as hard as you can and games are not "fiestas" (lack of strategy, just fighting) >You absolutely can autopilot through a game and still win. Significant part of day2day programming can be pretty brainless/trivial too - yet another gluing json over http. Don't get me wrong, there are insanely exhausting projects too. During programming you can take break whenever you want, go to kitchen, watch memes, hn, read news, blabla, meanwhile when you're in game, then you can't*.
- evandwight 5y ago
  How often do you engage your slow brain (from thinking fast and slow)? I feel like it's like speed chess and not normal chess. You have no time to think till after the game, you just have to do and trust your gut. The slow brain is what exhausts you.
  - tester756 5y ago
    There are slower and faster moments. e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want to do / achieve and how to do that It depends on the stage of the game, but generally when enemies are around, then you may don't have time to think.
    - wiseowise 5y ago
      > e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want to do / achieve and how to do that 30 seconds is infinite in games like that.
    - evandwight 5y ago
      That's been my experience too. I never felt exhausted playing. Thinking about what to do better between games was more draining. I've never played competitively, though I did get to about top 3000 in North America. Thanks for sharing!
arcsonnet 5y ago
This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level. You don't encounter a lot of autopiloting at the highest level of competition. The people you compete against are trying as hard as they possibly can to beat you, and it takes a tremendous amount of focus and ingenuity to outplay them and win. You gloss over the details of that monumental task with reductive phrasing - but I think you're overlooking a lot. I was at a party once, talking to a stranger about why I loved programming so much. They said: "Yeah, but at the end of the day, it's _just_ programming, right?". That's how this comment reads to me - "At the end of the day, it's just playing a game, right?" There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.
- kubb 5y ago
  Your response is really not adequate to what I wrote above, you seem to be projecting some past experiences that you had with people not giving you credit on me and it feels like a very unfortunate and provocative stance. If I wanted to respond in the same tone, I could say: "The guy is not a pro player, he doesn't compete at the highest level, he just grinds solo queue for 10 hours per day on Adderall. He got this way because he had a mixture of talent and addiction susceptibility. He got addicted to the dopamine hits that the free to play game was meticulously designed to deliver in a pattern that makes the player unable to stop even if he hates it and feels miserable." But I will say this: I think you're misinterpreting my comment as scorn when in reality it's my perspective based on my experiences with coding and playing this game. I know both, so I believe that my opinion is valuable and I decided to share it.
- wiseowise 5y ago
  > There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve. It's the same as with any activity. Time * dedication * (1 + natural talent) > This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level. I've done both, I'm not disregarding amount of skill and dedication it takes. But it is completely different from programming. Competetive gaming is akin to real sports, more about situation, luck and reaction rather than natural wits. All games are following patterns which you can learn just by spending time in game which adheres to limited set of rules defined by game logic.
panick21_ 5y ago
Playing a high level game of Starcraft or Dota is more exhausting to me then programming. With programming I have to think of some designs, spend some times with the tooling, setting things up, to all the busy work surrounding the core problem and so on. Sure there are moments when you really have to think very hard about what you do as well, but its not constant. I can take easy breaks. Run some tests and so on. When playing a game you have to be totally focused for longer periods and not just focus but also execute and handle the concept of being activity opposed. Its like if you were programming and the compiler was activity being evil.
melonbar 5y ago
I humbly disagree, and if you have not competed at the pro level in an RTS (Starcraft is another absurdly hard game that requires hundreds of actions a minute) then I believe your view is skewed. When I code all day there are tasks I can auto pilot. Rebase from gerrit, an amend, maybe hunting down answers on Stack Overflow. Sure, I get that coding != video games. But the skills Tyler has or someone who plays as a pro Star Craft player are Masters at a craft that takes way more than auto pilot. In many cases it is physically demanding too and I think you’re giving the wrong impression. It’s not a game at that point, it’s a profession, and an absurdly tough one at that. Machines can beat people at chess. Our AI had struggled for years to beat humans at Star Craft. I find that inspiring, and am in awe some people can push themselves so hard to be that good.
deleted 5y ago
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by kubb 5y ago

shanehoban 5y ago

Nah, he's right. I play league. Coding all day is much less draining.

kubb 5y ago
Except when you're drained you won't have the creativity to solve another programming task. But you will be able to queue up again. It also gets easier the more you play, because you're relying on the same skills that you build up with every match.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  I haven't ever played a MOBA, but fixing bugs (which takes up a significant amount of developer time), seems to be about as rote as playing an RTS (which I have played, albeit almost 20 years ago).

Permit 5y ago

Have you played League of Legends or Dota 2 before? It will be hard to convey the mental/emotional exhaustion that most people feel from playing MOBAs at even a semi-competitive level. In my experience it's a lot different than playing FPS or other games. I have a distinct memory of finishing a game of Dota 2 and realizing that it felt as though I'd just finished a 3 hour exam. I didn't feel happy that we'd won, just relieved. I don't think this will convince you, but perhaps consider being open to the possibility that it genuinely is as difficult as solving most programming problems that we face in our day-to-day work. In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode problems.

wiseowise 5y ago
> In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode problems. I have 3k hours in Dota 2. I know exactly what it is and how it works. It's really not. Not even close.
kubb 5y ago
Yeah I've played League for a bit. It really does get easier the more you play. By the way, I've just read in the article that Tyler's been on Adderall since first grade, I guess that will help him stay focused.
- abledon 5y ago
  wow, that explains so much, he usually plays it offlike its only the pre-workout bloodrush hes drinking
Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
I've played League of Legends for nearly 10 years. Not to take anything away from Tyler1, because he really goes above and beyond, but it really doesn't take much mental focus or anything really to play it. Programming? It takes focus, you really have to think sometimes. But League? When I'm tired the game plays itself. It just feels like muscle memory. It might take a bit more effort to play at a consistently high level. But I'm pretty sure it's mostly muscle memory for him too. There's very little actual thinking other than the big picture of what objectives to take and I'm sure when he's playing for 20+ hours he's just on autopilot for the majority of the time. To put it into comparison with how little mental power it personally takes me, I like to watch a lot of Anime, that's Japanese animation with English subtitles. I can't watch Anime if I'm tired because keeping track of subtitles and what's on screen actually takes a substantial amount of mental power. But I can bash out 5 games of LoL back to back when I'm equally as tired.
- MacroChip 5y ago
  There's a difference between "playing the game" and playing the game. I can sit at a chess board and move pieces around and say that chess takes no focus because I chose not to focus

colinmhayes 5y ago

There's a world of difference between playing league casually and competitively. No one at his level of play can autopilot through a game and still win.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
That's not true. The skill disparity between the very top players (100-500), and the rest of the players in the top league is usually very large.
- 1_player 5y ago
  The point of match-making is playing with people your same level. It doesn't matter what level tyler1 is, he'll be playing against people that will challenge and give him a hard time. You're not matched against people less skilled than you where you can just "relax" and walk it in. When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain there.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    > When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain there Top players hit the ceiling of the MMR system before they hit their skill ceiling. When you get to the very top of a ladder, matchmaking stops working correctly. Partly because the top few players are insanely good compared to everyone else and partly because there are literally not enough people online at any one time for an equal match to be made.
- seabird 5y ago
  He IS a very top player (solo Challenger, top 200 in 4/5 roles in the game). There's not a chance in hell he's able to go on autopilot at that point, even in slightly lower rank games during his grinds where he has to try and win losing games with a team that's not good enough to help him do it. The only reason he's not playing as a salaried professional is that he's in a bad region to do so and makes more being a personality.

1_player 5y ago

At gunpoint, I'd rather code 12 hours a day than play LoL or CS:GO 12 hours a day. Because programming is less exhausting and my code doesn't insult my mother on VOIP. And I say that as a gamer and esports enthusiast.

hogFeast 5y ago
I used to play League...then I found out everyone who played that game had slept with my mother.

tester756 5y ago

I have 5?k hours in LoL around high plat / in previous season low diamond and I'd say that LoL while being different from competitive programming is still exhausting if you want to play it with full focus for a few hours. Of course there's difference between playing ARAMs for fun and tryharding on "relatively competent" ELO where you try to do not commit mistakes as hard as you can and games are not "fiestas" (lack of strategy, just fighting) >You absolutely can autopilot through a game and still win. Significant part of day2day programming can be pretty brainless/trivial too - yet another gluing json over http. Don't get me wrong, there are insanely exhausting projects too. During programming you can take break whenever you want, go to kitchen, watch memes, hn, read news, blabla, meanwhile when you're in game, then you can't*.

evandwight 5y ago
How often do you engage your slow brain (from thinking fast and slow)? I feel like it's like speed chess and not normal chess. You have no time to think till after the game, you just have to do and trust your gut. The slow brain is what exhausts you.
- tester756 5y ago
  There are slower and faster moments. e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want to do / achieve and how to do that It depends on the stage of the game, but generally when enemies are around, then you may don't have time to think.
  - wiseowise 5y ago
    > e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want to do / achieve and how to do that 30 seconds is infinite in games like that.
  - evandwight 5y ago
    That's been my experience too. I never felt exhausted playing. Thinking about what to do better between games was more draining. I've never played competitively, though I did get to about top 3000 in North America. Thanks for sharing!

arcsonnet 5y ago

This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level. You don't encounter a lot of autopiloting at the highest level of competition. The people you compete against are trying as hard as they possibly can to beat you, and it takes a tremendous amount of focus and ingenuity to outplay them and win. You gloss over the details of that monumental task with reductive phrasing - but I think you're overlooking a lot. I was at a party once, talking to a stranger about why I loved programming so much. They said: "Yeah, but at the end of the day, it's _just_ programming, right?". That's how this comment reads to me - "At the end of the day, it's just playing a game, right?" There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.

kubb 5y ago
Your response is really not adequate to what I wrote above, you seem to be projecting some past experiences that you had with people not giving you credit on me and it feels like a very unfortunate and provocative stance. If I wanted to respond in the same tone, I could say: "The guy is not a pro player, he doesn't compete at the highest level, he just grinds solo queue for 10 hours per day on Adderall. He got this way because he had a mixture of talent and addiction susceptibility. He got addicted to the dopamine hits that the free to play game was meticulously designed to deliver in a pattern that makes the player unable to stop even if he hates it and feels miserable." But I will say this: I think you're misinterpreting my comment as scorn when in reality it's my perspective based on my experiences with coding and playing this game. I know both, so I believe that my opinion is valuable and I decided to share it.
wiseowise 5y ago
> There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve. It's the same as with any activity. Time * dedication * (1 + natural talent) > This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level. I've done both, I'm not disregarding amount of skill and dedication it takes. But it is completely different from programming. Competetive gaming is akin to real sports, more about situation, luck and reaction rather than natural wits. All games are following patterns which you can learn just by spending time in game which adheres to limited set of rules defined by game logic.

panick21_ 5y ago

Playing a high level game of Starcraft or Dota is more exhausting to me then programming. With programming I have to think of some designs, spend some times with the tooling, setting things up, to all the busy work surrounding the core problem and so on. Sure there are moments when you really have to think very hard about what you do as well, but its not constant. I can take easy breaks. Run some tests and so on. When playing a game you have to be totally focused for longer periods and not just focus but also execute and handle the concept of being activity opposed. Its like if you were programming and the compiler was activity being evil.

melonbar 5y ago

I humbly disagree, and if you have not competed at the pro level in an RTS (Starcraft is another absurdly hard game that requires hundreds of actions a minute) then I believe your view is skewed. When I code all day there are tasks I can auto pilot. Rebase from gerrit, an amend, maybe hunting down answers on Stack Overflow. Sure, I get that coding != video games. But the skills Tyler has or someone who plays as a pro Star Craft player are Masters at a craft that takes way more than auto pilot. In many cases it is physically demanding too and I think you’re giving the wrong impression. It’s not a game at that point, it’s a profession, and an absurdly tough one at that. Machines can beat people at chess. Our AI had struggled for years to beat humans at Star Craft. I find that inspiring, and am in awe some people can push themselves so hard to be that good.

deleted 5y ago

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