I wrote a computer game where a paper airplane flies room to room… It occurred to me that I was not indirectly surfacing this "endlessly scrolling building" that has recurred so often in what I suppose are nightmares(?).

At the same time, memory being what it is, I worry that the reverse is true—that the game I write inspired the nightmares (and that I now miss-remember when they began, misattribute them to my teenage years).

There is at times a feeling of infinite possibility when I find myself in these places while dreaming. I always enjoy exploring new places and so a place with infinite rooms, hallways, floors is going to keep me busy.

When I learned of Kowloon Walled City [1][2], that caught my attention. I've seen too descriptions of the underground portions of Hong Kong [3] that let you move from place to place without every stepping outside. The movie "Chungking Express" gives off that vibe [4]. The imaginary prisons of Giovanni Battista Piranesi [5].

[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/...

[2] http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-xI_c78etYDc/T61_qAwHWFI/AA...

[3] https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/hong-kong...

[4] https://youtu.be/0uMekCFDnkI

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carceri_d%27invenzione

Of course, it may be influenced by the fact that I spent ~15 years in the Boston area, and while New York is the city that never sleeps, Boston can get hauntingly empty late at night, or even on Sunday afternoon when most everything's closed...

For a great Kowloon-influenced atmospheric game, check out Stray.

And, arguably, still useful to all.

If you are implying that programmers who hand code are going the way of carpenters using hand tools, I think I can agree.

I personally can’t wait for no-ai communities to proliferate.

You are basically asking for a brain drain in a field that—like it or not—is going to be crucial in the future in spite of its obvious warts and poor implementation in the present. If that's what you want, be my guest and encourage it; but who's authorized to unilaterally make that decision in a given forum?

In the present case, the moderators for r/programming are. But they're making a mistake by marginalizing the technology that's redefining the practice because people talk about it too much instead of thinking about how to effectively talk about it and then steering the community in that direction.

But that's a full-time job. Which is why I think HN may turn out alright in the long run or a similar community will replace it if it fails to temper the change in the industry.

What this decisions signals to me is that r/programming has been inert for some time. I'm sure plenty of programmers, irrespective of their position on AI, probably find the community rejoicing in their resignation to the technologies influence as their cue to finally exit.

(Anyway, I still remember the thrill of writing assembly for a 68HC11 and getting a pair of hobby servos to respond.)

These days, with ESP32, Pi Pico W etc... things have changed a lot.

But before they got popular, Why deal with MCU + wiring some weird peripheral for wifi / ethernet when you get a Pi Zero W / Clone with built in wifi for the same price?

Now what I would have loved to have done is come up with some crazy analog circuit to implement an arbitrary transfer function from potentiometer input to LED voltage, but I didn't know how to do this at the time and the dev cycle would be a lot more painful than with software.

  void setup() {
    pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
  }
  
  void loop() {
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);  
    delay(1000);                     
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);   
    delay(1000);                      
  }

It is c++ though. Just limited in similar ways to the US air force's requirements for using the language.

(Of course, there are those to whom an Arduino is an overpriced piece of junk and they don't understand how I can't solder a three cent chip myself.)

But let's be realistic - all of these things are like my Steam library - purchases made but never used (I have a drawer full of Pis and other SBCs, and Arduino dev kits, etc. Someday I'll have time time time!).

  int main() {
    setup();
    for(;;) loop();
  }

I'd assume the average user on HN should be able to figure it out pretty easily.

In fact it's a lot more straight forward to not have to deal with Network Manager config files or systemd unit files or read only rootfs headaches of Linux world.

You can usually find libraries for your language of choice to speak GPIO and expose the pin's state as a variable in your code.

Until a week or so ago, it was on Wikipedia, but it appears to have been delisted. So here:

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=murc%27s+law

I always considered I would do something similar if I owned a used book store. Each year would usher in a new colors. All books acquired that year get that colored dot on the inside page.

Some 5 years (or so) on I could easily go through each shelf of books and find the ones that were not moving. These get one last chance (a year?) in a bargain bin before then they go to Goodwill or wherever.

Otherwise a used bookstore can remain in a "picked over" and cluttered state.