New Release! (Version 2.81)

[morvelaira]

I think there is an unspoken understanding here that I am a total maniac with the ban-hammer. Much like the lax gun-laws do in Texas, this tends to make people polite ;)

As I have always said - an armed society is a polite society. At least we're armed with brains as well as Flower's ban hammer.

[Gilberreke]

As I have always said - an armed society is a polite society. At least we're armed with brains as well as Flower's ban hammer.

Well, except for the fact that it's been proven time and time again in demographic numbers that that's actually a fallacy, seeing as crime rate usually has no direct correlations with gun ownership.

Then again, maybe you mean it literally and you think that Texan criminals are more polite, which might be true (I don't know any to confirm with :p)

[FlowerChild]

Well, except for the fact that it's been proven time and time again in demographic numbers that that's actually a fallacy, seeing as crime rate usually has no direct correlations with gun ownership.

Then again, maybe you mean it literally and you think that Texan criminals are more polite, which might be true (I don't know any to confirm with :p)

Well, I lived in Texas for awhile, and my experience was that shit was much less likely to happen (say a bar fight), but when it DID happen, it was MUCH more intense.

So yes, I think the number of guns around does make people more cautious about starting trouble (hence, more polite), however, when the trouble does occur, it gets way worse than it does in other places.

Based on that experience, I do think that the firearms act as a deterrent, especially the potential for concealed firearms so you don't know who is carrying (and the laws in Texas actually require you to conceal a handgun if you are carrying it...it's illegal to walk around with it visible).

When I first moved to Texas, I had an interesting experience. Since I move from place to place fairly frequently, I've formed the habit of asking cab drivers about the "lay of the land" when I get to a new place, since they are often very street-smart through the necessities of their profession. So, when I got to Texas, I asked a cab driver if there were any areas of town that I should avoid.

What he said in response made a ton of sense. He told me that what I wanted to do was get a sports-jacket, and as long as I was wearing it, nobody would know if I was carrying a gun and I could safely go pretty much anywhere in town. I took his advice, and my time in Texas was a very pleasant experience. I still have a thing for wearing sports-jackets to this day :)

[rbh]

@ Gilberreke & FlowerChild.
Please stop talking about bad code. At work this week I'm coming back on a program originally made by an intern, during the holidays of his tutor (we have : objects never destroyed, or never created (YES it can work), code reuse through copy/paste, no ref integrity in the DB, ...). It has then grown organically through several developers, one of them coming from WinDev and using : hidden textbox as variables, most other variable are of a string (CHAR) type whether they are used to store Boolean, integer, float or whatever. And of course there's no time to rewrite the all thing. (but this may change in the future as "unfortunate" consequence of : new IDE and new Database engine (soon we'll be free of Access)).

Anyway great update as usual, can't wait to see what will be this new age I keep reading about.
And if you want you can always continue to discuss Notch's code, just know that there's "bad code" and "BAD code".

[Adjudicator79]

The safest county in America also has the highest individual firearm ownership - Quantico County, Virginia. Of course, the fact that Officer Candidate School for the U.S Marines Corps and the training facilities for the Federal Bureau of Investigations are there, and thus not only do individuals own firearms, they are also highly trained in how to use them might have something to do with it! It's one thing to face the possibility of the home owner you are robbing owning a weapon, it's another thing entirely to know that he's been trained to overcome basic human reticence to inflict harm on strangers and kill with it!

Interesting tidbit aside, I'm mostly lost with this conversation. I know nothing about programming and assume that all of this is immensely revealing and intriguing conversation.

Of course, if you want to discuss the intricacies of international humanitarian and human rights law, I'm your man!

[FlowerChild]

The safest county in America also has the highest individual firearm ownership - Quantico County, Virginia. Of course, the fact that Officer Candidate School for the U.S Marines Corps and the training facilities for the Federal Bureau of Investigations are there, and thus not only do individuals own firearms, they are also highly trained in how to use them might have something to do with it! It's one thing to face the possibility of the home owner you are robbing owning a weapon, it's another thing entirely to know that he's been trained to overcome basic human reticence to inflict harm on strangers and kill with it!

Hehe...yeah, training certainly helps in feeling comfortable in such a society too. I was in the army for awhile when I was younger, so living in a society where anyone might be carrying a concealed firearm didn't bother me in the least. I know however that it make some people rather...uneasy :)

[morvelaira]

So yes, I think the number of guns around does make people more cautious about starting trouble (hence, more polite), however, when the trouble does occur, it gets way worse than it does in other places.

My point exactly. Polite is not the same thing as safe, but it can go a long way in at least the appearance of things.

[Gilberreke]

Ugh, I know. I was at a company a few months back where they had 20+ years development cycle on one of their products and not a single good developer in all those years. Imagine 4000 line long source files filled with the most horrific sequential code ever that was ported a few years back from C++ to C#.

Why would any company port their flagship to C# if their total number of senior OO programmers is 0? They offered me full contract after two weeks, which I declined wisely. There's a LOT worse programmers out there than Notch can ever be.

One of the "bugs" I found out while working there? You can log in without a password if you check the "remember my login" button. We're talking accountancy and financials software here, used by a good 5000 people across companies, the biggest client being an insurance firm.

If I were a fraudster, I'd be rich now. I saw unprotected bank account access for heaven's sake.

[gftweek]

New Zealand has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world (lots of farmers), but it's illegal to carry arms, and gun crime here is almost unheard of, and makes national news when it does. Then again our country's population is smaller than many cities.

I am a programmer as well, and sometimes I despair at some of the things I see in our code that have never been fixed as they would take too long, cost too much, or have a simple workaround, so they persist. That said I try to fix everything I come across if I can within my tasks time-frame.

[Elensaar]

<snip>... just know that there's "bad code" and "BAD code".

Amen to that. My relatively limited (going on five years) experience as a professional developer, as well as all those years as a hobbyist, have definitely thought me that. Sometimes it's painful to see what someone can do to a project if they're not thinking.

I haven't seen any of Notch's or Jeb's code, but if they really are doing special code for things that are reused all over the code base then it sounds like I would get a headache trying... And I'm still convinced that it's not even close to being really BAD code.

Still, I have great respect for Notch for actually getting this far anyway, and for continuing to press on. And I do remember him mentioning that he wanted to clean up large parts of the codebase. (I might be imagining things, og course...) I think he listed it as one of the reasons why a MOD api would not be coming any time soon, since they're focusing on implementing the features they want in the game first.

Must say I don't envy him the refactoring he's got ahead of him... ;)

[Gilberreke]

That said I try to fix everything I come across if I can within my tasks time-frame.

I'm like that too. You can call it ninja programming. Sure, I don't get paid for it, but I love my job and I hate bad code.

[gftweek]

That said I try to fix everything I come across if I can within my tasks time-frame.

I'm like that too. You can call it ninja programming. Sure, I don't get paid for it, but I love my job and I hate bad code.

It drives me nuts, I even reformat every object I change, so next time it's more readable and easier to alter.

I remember seeing that Notch and Jeb work on a percentage split of necessary versus fun code, so they are trying to clean things up and improve performance, and try not to get too carried away with adding new features. Without being a modder over several releases though, I can't say how well they are achieving this goal.

[FlowerChild]

It drives me nuts, I even reformat every object I change, so next time it's more readable and easier to alter.

Yeah, unfortunately that's not something that you can effectively do while working on a mod since the actual developers aren't privy to your code changes :)

If that weren't the case, I would have certainly already redone and/or refactored HUGE portions of the Minecraft code-base.

[finite8]

how was it that sold 10 milion copys of an unfinished game at 14 euros . just saying

Yeah, 99% of the people complaining on notch don't actually know what it's like to have a game in production. Bottom line is, Notch is not a great programmer, but if anyone is interested I can make a whole analysis on Minecraft codebase. I've seen lots of the "bad" code in Notch's code before in other projects and there are tons of factors that are at play here that you people have no clue about, not having worked in the industry and/or indie scene. When using the development cycle notch uses (rapid prototyping), I wouldn't expect better code out of most programmers. It simply isn't feasible to rapid prototype a game, write good code, good code architecture and then expand it to the size of minecraft and still get lots of features off the list.

Look at the whole picture people, it's not as simple as it seems.

To summarize your post:

Spoiler

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[Gilberreke]

Yeah, basically. That's actually very accurate in real world multi-developer situations.

[gftweek]

Except "Throw it all out and start over again" just usually becomes "Release anyway".

[BinoAl]

Haha, gotta love xkcd

[ShadowyFIgure]

Ive lived in texas my whole (short 14 year old) life, the only thing i have to say about what Flower said, was to carry a hidden arm your suppost to take a 12 hour class. but everything else he said was true :3

[FlowerChild]

Ive lived in texas my whole (short 14 year old) life, the only thing i have to say about what Flower said, was to carry a hidden arm your suppost to take a 12 hour class. but everything else he said was true :3

Yup, I know. The thing is, no one knows whether you've taken the course or not. I never carried a hand gun while in Texas. The point was that nobody could tell.

[Sky_Som]

Ive lived in texas my whole (short 14 year old) life, the only thing i have to say about what Flower said, was to carry a hidden arm your suppost to take a 12 hour class. but everything else he said was true :3

Yup, I know. The thing is, no one knows whether you've taken the course or not. I never carried a hand gun while in Texas. The point was that nobody could tell.

So pretty much you could have used your fingers like the guy from Gran Torino.

[FlowerChild]

So pretty much you could have used your fingers like the guy from Gran Torino.

Hehe...nah, it never came to anything like that. I know I did once reach behind my back towards my belt in a rather dodgy situation, but I wouldn't recommend pulling that trick on a regular basis.

You've really got to have a good read on a situation to do something like that, as it of course may result in someone pulling a REAL gun ;)

[ShadowyFIgure]

So, back on topic, i belive the next update is going to involve trains. In the text file it says "You hear that whistle coming?" which in my mind means the train is coming in the next update? + the bellows might be part of fueling the trains engine. even if its not coming in the next update, it would be nice if it comes eventually :D

[Kwilt]

I only have one request:

When, and if, there are trains, I request 'Folsom Prison Blues' for the video. You keep making me listen to it because of that damn splash.

[cheechako]

re: Texas

Oh, that small state down south :)

[FlowerChild]

So, back on topic, i belive the next update is going to involve trains. In the text file it says "You hear that whistle coming?" which in my mind means the train is coming in the next update? + the bellows might be part of fueling the trains engine. even if its not coming in the next update, it would be nice if it comes eventually :D

Speculating about upcoming features is back on topic? No...no it's not.