Something that's been increasingly nagging at me. The terms "Coder", "Coding", "Iconner", etc. are all pretty trapped within our specific little corner of the internet.
Maybe it's just me thinking that talking the talk helps get you ready to walk the walk, but I'm increasingly of the opinion these terms need to find the nearest dumpster and stay there.
Thoughts?
ID:1425162
 Nov 18 2013, 8:38 pm
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Nov 18 2013, 8:43 pm
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Boxcar
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Well, they're useful in the way that you can immediately tell who's serious and who's incompetent in classified ads by looking for those words.
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I'm of the opinion it is impossible to get rid of those terms here. Once a bad practice has circulated on BYOND, it's pretty much impossible to kill off because they always become widely accepted as the right way despite being completely wrong (See also: goto, :, and just about every other thing the average BYOND "coder" does).
Other really dumb terms that people seriously use include "hubber" and "gfxer." | |
I'm glad I'm not the only one. Artist was already a word.
re: bad practices, I would love to see a guide to good standards and practices with BYOND, there's a wealth of information and good code around here but it's pretty scattered around. | |
LordAndrew wrote:
I'm of the opinion it is impossible to get rid of those terms here. I'm with the approach of optimism frontend fueled by a violent and seething pessimism behind the curtain. I do hope these things can sort of be changed over time. That said, however, I didn't even know "hubber" was a thing. Gfxer is one of those terms that I'm ashamed I know what it means. I never understood the trend of "I'll just take a screencap of X popular anime off google and apply a lensflare and ridiculous photoshop filters!". | |
What do you have against iconners?! I think you're just jealous of their sweet bases.
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LordAndrew wrote:
(See also: goto, :, and just about every other thing the average BYOND "coder" does). Please don't throw : in with goto. I have encountered many legitimate reasons to use :, where . just simply wouldn't work. Runtime search can prove to be very useful, if you just know how to use it correctly. You can't always rely on the compiler to make the right judgement. If you don't know how to prevent errors, that's entirely your fault, not the fault of the runtime search operator. Anyway, what you are talking about here seems to have been part of the original lexicon of the anime rip community, before it spread out all over BYOND. Let me see if I can define these terms: coder /*A person who specializes in copy and pasting code from other sources, I'm not too sure what can be done about this problem. It's like some kind of terrible disease. As these terms spread through BYOND, those who use them are often assimilated into the anime rip crowd. Somehow, we have to convince everyone that here at BYOND, we are a community of game developers, programmers, and graphic designers. Also, something odd just occurred to me. What about all of the players? This site has developers and games, but there is this eerie absence of players around here. I think we might need to find a way to get them back. It's kind of sad when the only people there to play the games you develop are other developers. I mean it's not like there's very many of us here. Something obviously needs to change. | |
I find it funny how you care so much about how others use these terms.
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The look-up operator is analogous to reflection, which is often in the professional programming world only used to shoehorn behavior into types where single-inheritance polymorphism is dominant, and multiple inheritance must be emulated.
That said, it's not a bad approach for BYOND overall, it's just quite often overused because polymorphism is just a concept that escapes a large majority of our community, including a number of the bright shining examples we have around here. I've been fixing a number of polymorphism issues this last week in Eternia, even, so it's a wider issue than just anime rips. As for goto... I don't think I've seen people legitimately use goto in anime games in a long time, which is why I don't list it among my "common mistakes" rants that I'm obligated to make periodically in the developer help/design philosophy subforums. Overall, I'd say our root issue is usr abuse, which leads to look-up operator abuse, which leads to code spaghettification and variable spam. Kozuma3 wrote: I find it funny how you care so much about how others use these terms. If you haven't noticed, I spend an awful lot of time helping other people. Sometimes, terms like these are indicative of bigger issues with their thinking, and when someone asks me questions with one of the above terms in it, I tend to note that it's easier to teach people that know nothing, rather than teach people who have been taught bad practices to begin with. The problem with certain terms is that they indicate a manner of thought that is directly detrimental and toxic. | |
I know I am.
--- Pretty much the reason these terms; and somewhat more importantly, dodgy programming practices, persist around BYOND has a lot to do with two factors:
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Did we all miss the time "questor" became a thing? Or am I the only one to remember that.
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I just find it amusing that this idiotic vernacular has been passed down through the generations of anime games since the late 90's. I doubt a single developer or player of those games from its first inception has been on the site in years, yet their legacy has not only endured, it's exponentially grown!
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am pro codder.
I used to feel more convicted about convincing people to use proper terms such as "programmer" and "pixel artist". Now I tend to ignore it. Most people that say they are "coders" or "iconners" are better off with those terms. If all you do is inject mediocre code into BYOND games, I'm perfectly fine with you calling yourself a coder and not a programmer; and if you call yourself an iconner, you probably aren't worthy of the "artist" in pixel artist. I don't consider this universal, but this is how I think about those people. I wouldn't mind those terms being thrown out altogether, as the OP suggests, but I do feel like I'm ascribing far too much skill to people by trying to call them programmers and pixel artists when they really know nothing about the trades (nor do they even want to). BYOND is an interesting place being that it's full of those people -- and they get away with it by ripping their Naruto games. | |
I've come to have a similar point of view to everyone here, really. I hate the terms, I have made attempts to correct people in games I had chats in, I know what using the terms often says about the person, but I've ultimately just stopped paying it much mind.
Any time I try to correct someone they either ignore me, or often act similar to how someone that refuses to use proper English online does. They think it does not matter, and they are completely uninterested in hearing about it. They're right, we're wrong, they're done. That's the mindset I usually encountered. If I teach someone anything about any part of game development, then I try to pass on the correct terms. I rarely do so with how often people give up, but that's about as much as I think we can do. Now, if tutorials, demos, libraries, and such started appearing more and used the correct terms I do believe that would help influence things a bit at least. It might take some time, but it could shift the amount of users using the terms around a bit. That at least influences future members, but as for the existing community I think Multiverse7 brought up a good point. It's increasingly difficult to have much of an influence over a community that rarely spends much, if any time on the website. I think some of the pager updates are helping a bit with this, but there really are far too few people even bothering. What do we have to do? Make a frickin forum section just for talking about anime? It really is quite annoying how detached players are. Oh, and by the way... Am I the only one who saw this thread and thought of things like turfer while typing his response? That term is unfortunately one that I saw pop up pretty recently. | |
There's nothing wrong with using terminology as long as the intent is understood. If I go down south and I hear someone use "y'all", sure I cringe a bit, but it is understood that the person in question is referring to a group of people and the people they're referencing understand that they're being referenced. Sure, you can laugh at people looking for "coders" and "mappers" (or "turfers") but the people that broadcast themselves as programmers and level designers that want to broadcast their services through games understand what the person wants, so all is well.
Counterpoint?: What if these people want jobs, we're just teaching them the proper terminology so they don't get thrown out for being a ponce. Counter-counterpoint: Anyone that wants to get a job in programming/pixel artististry(?) will probably have to take classes, and will learn the proper terminology to put on their resume there. It's not your job to fix what'll fix itself. tl;dr: We can laugh, but it really doesn't change a thing and it doesn't really matter. All will be well. | |
"I'm looking for a coder to write my entire MORPG for me. I cannot offer money but I will allow you to be a GM, that way you can not only write the game but also be responsible for banning all the 8 year olds spamming porn links in world chat as well. If we profit from this game somewhere down the line, then we can talk about cash. Bear in mind, I'm prone to being MIA from Skype and I often ignore my Gmail inbox for several months at a time leaving you with absolutely no way to get in contact with me to discuss your compensation, which means I may end up just completely forgetting about you and keeping all revenue for myself. If you're interested in being my sucker, I mean my coder, please send me a message via the BYOND pager."
Pretty much every classified ad in a nutshell. | |
the majority of my CS professors use the terms "coder" and "coding".
also. calculator. | |
The term coder has a broader scope, but I have only seen kids on byond using terms like "gfxer" or any sort of half assed "[noun]er." Why not keep them. As mentioned before, we would know who those kids who learned to design the bad way are.
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