5 ms·

> we'd be in a much better place what code-archaeology is concerned. This sounds like a great setup for a sci-fi novel. 500 years into the future, the infrastr

by gh02t 12y ago

> we'd be in a much better place what code-archaeology is concerned. This sounds like a great setup for a sci-fi novel. 500 years into the future, the infrastructure their distant ancestors coded has begun to fail. Now Biff Miffington, code-archaeologist, must sift through millions of forgotten messages using a mysterious tool remembered only as "git." Its interface is arcane and the remaining messages broken, tainted by the destructive influence of Mountain Dew and Cheetos. Will he unravel the mystery that's causing Candy Crush Saga MCCXXXI to kill its users? Edit: On what OP actually said, I'd also like to say that Postgres is an awesome product.

frost_knight 12y ago
Candy Crush Saga on git? Sounds more like a fantasy novel.
- bsg75 12y ago
  Maybe not once it becomes an ancient relic: https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
- gh02t 12y ago
  Heh, the twist is that he discovers the secret, which is that Candy Crush is really a giant conspiracy to cull the feeble. He decides not to fix anything.
dnfehren 12y ago
Ken Macleod's books have a some of this kind of stuff in them - people having to maintain old space stations that run Oracle DB's and stuff like that.
pilif 12y ago
When I say "code archeology", I mean the equivalent of "git blame" without assigning blame - just finding out why stuff is the way it is and not who's responsible because that would be totally pointless, especially years after the incident. I do like your spin however :-)
- gh02t 12y ago
  Oh yeah, I knew your meaning. Doing blame and bisect to find a deep-seated bug can be a lot of fun... or frustrating and miserable. I tend to give terrible on word commit messages when I'm developing, but I always do an interactive rebase to clean things up and make a reasonable view of history. We use Phabricator a lot too, which does a great job of letting you annotate code, commits etc.
- NickNameNick 12y ago
  Praise is a built-in alias for SVN, not so for git unfortunately.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Ditto in Bazaar, which copied SVN. But there's an easy fix: git config --global alias.praise blame
arethuza 12y ago
Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky actually has a role described as "programmer archaeologist": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Interstellar_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Interstel...
- jdnier 12y ago
  A great book, full of interesting ideas and implications of software development carried on over millennia.
- veidr 12y ago
  That is, btw, an absolutely fantastic distant future sci-fi novel. Among the best of all time. (Vinge doesn't consistently product books that good, but man that one is great.)
  - squeaky-clean 12y ago
    Just bought it because that premise sounds amazing. Amazon has it listed as "Zones of Thought series Book 2". Should I read book 1 before reading this?
    - veidr 12y ago
      Maybe, but I don't think you necessarily need to. I started with A Deepness in the Sky and then read the other two (and then all the other books Vinge has written). Especially since it is actually a prequel, I don't think the order is that important.
    - wiml 12y ago
      There are things in Deepness that will have more significance if you've read A Fire upon the Deep, but nothing central to the plot. They're both standalone novels, just in the same setting/universe/background.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
In Vernor Vinge's Deepness In The Sky, there really are code archeologists, as it's often simpler to find programs than to write them from scratch. They believe that the Unix epoch (since extended many times over) dates to the moon landing (approximately correct), since the exact historical explanation has been lost.
angersock 12y ago
Testing the waters, I'd played with the idea of a story with basically this setup: Two new developers start at a company/startup, and are brought in to do a six-month sprint to fix a stalled/broken product after the development team becomes unavailable because reasons. So, they're dropped into a codebase and are trying to pull everything together. However, as they work through into deeper and deeper parts of the system, the commit messages and comments get more and more cryptic and unsettling, hinting at the reasons for the prior team's dissolution, the business forces that caused that to happen, and maybe something worse/better going on outside. I'm really lazy though. :(
- elsurudo 12y ago
  I like it. It reminds me of something like System Shock (2 is the one I played), where you learn about what happened on this ship before it was overrun by mutants from journals and such. Instead of a book, this may work well as a game of some sort. Perhaps even text-based?
- pilif 12y ago
  This is a really good idea. Too bad I seriously suck at writing fiction or I'd pick this up.
- phaemon 12y ago
  >after the development team becomes unavailable because reasons. Every member of the programming team was attacked and killed by wolves in unrelated incidents on the same night. And they said it couldn't happen...
chetanahuja 12y ago
I'm pretty sure Sony has already optioned this plot and trying to get Tom Cruise for Biff.

by gh02t 12y ago

frost_knight 12y ago

Candy Crush Saga on git? Sounds more like a fantasy novel.

bsg75 12y ago
Maybe not once it becomes an ancient relic: https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
gh02t 12y ago
Heh, the twist is that he discovers the secret, which is that Candy Crush is really a giant conspiracy to cull the feeble. He decides not to fix anything.

dnfehren 12y ago

Ken Macleod's books have a some of this kind of stuff in them - people having to maintain old space stations that run Oracle DB's and stuff like that.

pilif 12y ago

When I say "code archeology", I mean the equivalent of "git blame" without assigning blame - just finding out why stuff is the way it is and not who's responsible because that would be totally pointless, especially years after the incident. I do like your spin however :-)

gh02t 12y ago
Oh yeah, I knew your meaning. Doing blame and bisect to find a deep-seated bug can be a lot of fun... or frustrating and miserable. I tend to give terrible on word commit messages when I'm developing, but I always do an interactive rebase to clean things up and make a reasonable view of history. We use Phabricator a lot too, which does a great job of letting you annotate code, commits etc.
NickNameNick 12y ago
Praise is a built-in alias for SVN, not so for git unfortunately.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Ditto in Bazaar, which copied SVN. But there's an easy fix: git config --global alias.praise blame

arethuza 12y ago

Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky actually has a role described as "programmer archaeologist": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Interstellar_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Interstel...

jdnier 12y ago
A great book, full of interesting ideas and implications of software development carried on over millennia.
veidr 12y ago
That is, btw, an absolutely fantastic distant future sci-fi novel. Among the best of all time. (Vinge doesn't consistently product books that good, but man that one is great.)
- squeaky-clean 12y ago
  Just bought it because that premise sounds amazing. Amazon has it listed as "Zones of Thought series Book 2". Should I read book 1 before reading this?
  - veidr 12y ago
    Maybe, but I don't think you necessarily need to. I started with A Deepness in the Sky and then read the other two (and then all the other books Vinge has written). Especially since it is actually a prequel, I don't think the order is that important.
  - wiml 12y ago
    There are things in Deepness that will have more significance if you've read A Fire upon the Deep, but nothing central to the plot. They're both standalone novels, just in the same setting/universe/background.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

In Vernor Vinge's Deepness In The Sky, there really are code archeologists, as it's often simpler to find programs than to write them from scratch. They believe that the Unix epoch (since extended many times over) dates to the moon landing (approximately correct), since the exact historical explanation has been lost.

angersock 12y ago

Testing the waters, I'd played with the idea of a story with basically this setup: Two new developers start at a company/startup, and are brought in to do a six-month sprint to fix a stalled/broken product after the development team becomes unavailable because reasons. So, they're dropped into a codebase and are trying to pull everything together. However, as they work through into deeper and deeper parts of the system, the commit messages and comments get more and more cryptic and unsettling, hinting at the reasons for the prior team's dissolution, the business forces that caused that to happen, and maybe something worse/better going on outside. I'm really lazy though. :(

elsurudo 12y ago
I like it. It reminds me of something like System Shock (2 is the one I played), where you learn about what happened on this ship before it was overrun by mutants from journals and such. Instead of a book, this may work well as a game of some sort. Perhaps even text-based?
pilif 12y ago
This is a really good idea. Too bad I seriously suck at writing fiction or I'd pick this up.
phaemon 12y ago
>after the development team becomes unavailable because reasons. Every member of the programming team was attacked and killed by wolves in unrelated incidents on the same night. And they said it couldn't happen...

chetanahuja 12y ago

I'm pretty sure Sony has already optioned this plot and trying to get Tom Cruise for Biff.