Python was the first programming language (outside of ti-basic) that I was able to master, after trying to learn c and java. I learned it to script blender games, which had a very fun little game engine.
Blender's use of python was quite extensive, as a way to quickly retool the program as an animation studio experiences many changing requirements from clients. Fun fact, blender and python both have dutch roots.
I think Python's main acceptance came from it's uses as an embedded scripting language, and as a perl or bash replacement for automating computing tasks. Tools like scons to replace make, or PIL to do image processing were pretty big deals. You would often hear about such and such replacing their complicated patchwork of tooling and manual processes with something more organized built in python.
Where TTS excels is for designers. It's super quick to change rules in the middle of the game, import new components, make small alterations, you name it. You can open a new table and just start experimenting with the components they give you, and move on to importing new assets when you are ready. And you don't need to code up a ui for it.
This freedom is good for tabletop roleplaying as well, though if you are working within an established ruleset that has an implementation on roll20 or fantasygrounds those give the gm more out of the box automation tools.
As someone who learned on python (many years ago), I think the balance of being allowed to shoot myself in the foot, while only having to learn complexity when complex concepts came up, was a good combination rather than a bad one. Trying to learn C++ and Java before, having to type everything was an impedement. On python, you find out that types still matter when you try to add a string to an integer, for example. The moment the type matters to you is when you need to dig into those details. I'm not sure I would have the career I do if it hadn't been around to be the one language that fit my 16-year old brain.
I'm not surprised at how your mom reacts to Trump. I'm surprised so many young people believe that covid is no big deal. I agree with you that the quality of our ideas has improved, but I also disagree in that the spread of our bad ideas has also improved. Concepts that were held by a fringe of society in the past, like the idea that the Earth is flat have grown their own communities who have interests in keeping those ideas alive. Ideas, bad and good, have gotten a lot stickier.
With stickier ideas, the marketplace becomes worse, because nothing ever gets pruned out of it. Too much energy is spent on limiting the growth of bad ideas than can be spent on refining the better ideas.
> I'm surprised so many young people believe that covid is no big deal.
Have you ever entertained the idea that perhaps you're wrong and they're right? I mean it's at least possible that you've been lead to the wrong conclusion by systemic errors that have yet to be identified, and perhaps wont be for many years into the future.
There are multiple levels. While I like the idea of separating seeing only what my followers post and seeing other posts, it gets really blurry when the people I follow are clicking the "like" and "retweet" buttons. I would guestimate around 30% or more of my twitter feed are posts people I follow have liked or retweeted rather than posted on their own.
And the network can make that happen on its own, without an algorithm reordering content - if someone I follow is retweeting something that someone they follow retweeted.
While WebVR scenes can be viewed in a browser, their intended target is the vr headset, where the "dragging" is not at issue, and you are turning the view by turning your head. I think it would make more sense to keep the reverse dragging and change the mouse icon here. The intended experience is not "here is a scene that you can drag around" but "here is a virtual scene you are standing in and you can look left and right". So the intended context is that, headset or not, you are controlling the viewers head.
"Now you download Unity and almost everything but the art design and game logic is done for you."
Yes, Unity helps to visually organize your game's data, and there are built in and downloadable components (which are all created by coders) that can be used to plug into your game, but it's just another set of abstractions. Most of the time you will be writing your own components in a traditional coding language or delving into other's component code to adapt it to actually make your game function. There ARE game creation systems intended for no coding required, but they come with the expected limitations of visual coding that people are bringing up in this thread. No, Unity doesn't really fall into this category, barring a few limited game domains.
Perhaps in 50 years every domain will be "mapped" in this way, with predefined components that work with each other and can be tweaked as needed, but I don't see how that could eliminate coding, or even displace it that much. Two reasons I think coding is here to stay:
1) Any sufficiently complex system needs it's organization to be managed. At a certain complexity, whatever system is replacing coding will become something that looks a lot like coding. At that level of complexity, text is easier to manage than a visual metaphor.
2) Most pieces of software need custom components, even if only to stand out. Those game creation systems with no coding? No one is impressed by the games that are created in those systems. Not because the system cannot produce something worthwhile - but because with everything looking the same, the value of that output drops substantially.
I think coding will only go away when programming does. When the computer is as intelligent and creative as we are. And that's a point which I do not want think about too much.
I think we'll reach that point in 50 years because we already have computers with certain types of intelligence that exceed ours. Translating a human intent into machine language does work with coding, but we have to admit that it's not ideal. There are too many mistakes and vulnerabilities. Even the smartest people create bugs.
This like the shift in transportation. A lot of people love driving and mistrust autonomous vehicles. But the tech is almost to the point where it's safer than human drivers. In most situations, it already is.
Another comparison would be SaaS. For a lot of companies, it's about risk mitigation. Moving responsibilities away from internal staff makes business sense in many cases.
This is a criticism of the idea that we need to make coding a basic life skill that everyone should focus on. It looks a lot like denial to some people.
Let's go back to transportation. Imagine if people were pushing the idea that commercial driving needs to be in every high school because driving was such a big employment area. Some people might say that the autonomous vehicles look like a big threat to job prospects, so maybe it's not such a good idea to focus on those particular skills.
Coding is great, provides a lot of opportunities to the people that it attracts, but it's a pretty specialized skill that's going to be increasingly displaced by more natural and automatic interfaces this century in all likelihood.
Steamspy is highly inaccurate, but I do think Vive sales are generally healthy, and it seems like they are making them about as fast as they can be sold now. It has enough of an install base for quality content to make it onto the top 10 list when they launch, as Pool Nation VR did a few weeks ago. The general public still has not tried VR (barring maybe cardboard) and a very vocal group is against the very idea of it. Still a pretty steep mountain to teleport up.
Game developer here: SteamSpy's data is actually very accurate. We have a game on Steam and the actual sales figures are well within the error margins specified on the site. And other local devs has said the same about their games as well.
Setup can be full of issues for sure - but when it is working properly you should never be losing tracking. Are you using the sync cable? Things got a lot better when I started using that. I still am not understanding the "many cables" functionally there is only one. It is a pain to deal with, but if there is any roomscale with Oculus touch, you will run into the same issue until we can get wireless systems.
Blurry edges depend a lot on where the headset is sitting on your head, and playing with the straps can really improve the experience (even the feeling like it's heavy). Mine is fairly tight on the sides and then long on the top strap, pulling everything back a lot further than it feels like you are supposed to.
Anyway, not trying to criticize your preference, but hoping your Vive experience can get a bit better.
Blender's use of python was quite extensive, as a way to quickly retool the program as an animation studio experiences many changing requirements from clients. Fun fact, blender and python both have dutch roots.
I think Python's main acceptance came from it's uses as an embedded scripting language, and as a perl or bash replacement for automating computing tasks. Tools like scons to replace make, or PIL to do image processing were pretty big deals. You would often hear about such and such replacing their complicated patchwork of tooling and manual processes with something more organized built in python.