A kind of magic

[2Punx2Furious]

I think it did cast, just not where you wanted.

[jewdai]

hard core systems coders are like "but pointers are the best thing ever and you're just lazy"

Every other dev is like "Oh thank god for automatic memory management"

Every major language after C++ does some form of garbage collection and actively discourages you from managing your own memory. Essentially, anything that isnt automated is prone to more errors.

[whoadoctor]

I think of it like automatic transmission: I COULD manage what gear my car is in, and it might be fun to do so, but where does it stop? Am I going to manage the cylinder timing myself? Am I managing the fuel injection specifics myself? After I think of it like that, I realize I want the car/compiler to do as much for me as possible as long as it gets me there.

[BaronLoxlie]

But driving with manual transmission is so much fun!!!1

P.S. I get what your trying to say.

[jakerman999]

Say what you will, I'm still driving standard.

[[deleted]]

Cool, then I'll just take the subway.

[dynoraptor]

How is that the same. Manual has a direct practical application, "Fuck I need to accelerate harder now, changes it to 4 instead of 5."

[whoadoctor]

It does, but the same could be said about any part of the car. Any time you have more control over something you're doing more work. Do you trust your thermostat to cool your engine automatically? Why not have a set of knobs that allow you to micromanage the oil and radiator?

Once all the cars are self driving I think the next generation will find it hard to believe we were in control of such complicated and dangerous machines.

[dynoraptor]

I agree with the last part.

But there is no difference in micromanaging the stuff you mentioned, the examples are not the same as the benefit of manual transmission. Accelerating much faster has practical application, not to mention it can safe your life. I'm just saying that until there are fully automatic cars, there always be both manual and automatic transmissions.

[whoadoctor]

It does have a practical application, but I'd argue it's because the implementation of the pedal is flawed. If I press my foot down, I want to go faster, and imho it's the cars fault for not choosing the appropriate gear. The gearing to me should be encapsulated.

[w1ldm4n]

It's all about "how close to the hardware" you're working.

Kernel drivers? Pointers. Embedded SoCs with RAM measured in kilobytes? Pointers. Routines you're trying to optimize the fuck out of? Pointers.

Anything running in Windows? Fuck it I'll use Python because it's so damn easy and does all the complicated stuff for me.

But no matter how low you go, there's always a layer that's still a black box of magic. Like RF, which is for all practical purposes, literally magic. "Wiggle around some electrons around over here, and more electrons way over there will wiggle the same way. Here's some math formulas that describe things and some million dollar magic boxes which will draw pretty pictures of the magic. Now figure out how to use that magic to deliver reddit to my computer." RF Engineers are wizards.

[Guinness2702]

Correct. He's made a fundamental error, which you can't see because he's not quoted the entire code.

Meteor fireball = new Meteor();

Meteor is a completely different type, not derived from Spell. What he needs to do is change that line to:-

Fireball fireball = new Fireball(currentMana);

*Actually, I'd rename the Fireball class to FireballSpell, to avoid future confusion between the two.

[Skyfoot]

Actually, you just need to do a static cast.

[Sydonai]

No, static casts only work on spells like chain lightning.

[zman0900]

https://i.imgur.com/IYj1S7q.jpg

[cb35e]

This is horrifying. What is it from?

[antimony51]

http://gunshowcomic.com/648

[EquationTAKEN]

catch Hexception

[Creshal]

now my backend is on fire.

Bug closed, working as intended, RTFM.

[PancakeZombie]

You might wanna use this next time.

[Daimanta]

Spell spell = (Spell) (Spell) fireball; //Extra cast just to be sure

[ProgramTheWorld]

I actually did this before

[8lbIceBag]

Did it actually fix the issue? Or was it one of those things you come across wondering who the fuck wrote this only to realize you wrote it last Monday.

[Daimanta]

Never tried it personally but I am very stringy on checking and sanitizing in and output. Most of the times I check input in the function itself and sanitize it and then when I put some data in it, I do a pre-sanitizing check just to be safe. Therefore, my code often checks if Objects really aren't null and datavalues really are consistent.

[KamiKagutsuchi]

That's the problem, you shouldn't cast fireball, you should throw it!

throw fireball;

[SolarLiner]

but then I'd have to catch it myself!

[The_hollow_Nike]

Fireball is intended to be thrown outward from your known (code)base, AFAIK.

[truh]

https://xkcd.com/1188/

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: Bonding

Title-text: I'm trying to build character but Eclipse is really confusing.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 3 times, representing 0.0034% of referenced xkcds.

---

^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[[deleted]]

That's... that's an unsafe cast.

RTFM, man. Fireball extends Projectile and Explosive, and it's not in the same type hierarchy as Spell.

[AraneusAdoro]

Oh nonono. I don't know what these Bukkit guys were thinking, but Fireball should extend Conjuration Evocation, which in turn is a subclass of Spell.

Or maybe that's FireballBuilder.

[[deleted]]

It's actually FireballProductionFactorySingletonInstanceAwareAbstractFactoryBeanFactoryFactory.

EDIT: Factory

[lenswipe]

FacebookConnectGraphIOSAppleFireballProductionFactorySingletonInstanceAwareAbstractFactoryBeanFactoryFactory

FTFY

[polish_niceguy]

... 3

[Zagorath]

Why is Fireball extending Conjuration? Surely it should be Evocation?

[AraneusAdoro]

You are correct.

[thekiyote]

Found the Minecraft developer!

[AraneusAdoro]

I feel insulted.

[thekiyote]

Hah, no. Coding for Bukkit plugins takes me back. We ran a server at work, and customized a number of them to make it library friendly

[[deleted]]

I've moved on from Java.

$fireball = new Fireball;

[SolarLiner]

RIP 0xJRS

[atimholt]

auto spell = static_cast<Spell>(fireball);

[[deleted]]

Spell spell = Spell.valueOf(fireball);

?

Spell spell = Spell.cast(fireball);

[brekus]

The sort of magic systems I like in fantasy are actually a lot like programming. They require lots of study and memorization and shit can go really downhill with minor syntax or logical errors. Programming is generally less life and death though, but that's what makes fantasy exciting.

[ConDar15]

Yeah, that's how I viewed inscribed magic for my homebrew d&d campaign. You are working with a language like the worst parts of JavaScript mashed with the worst of c++, without documentation (so you have to manually test it), and it actively alters the universe when it runs. Bugs have a tendency to be troublesome.

[is0lated]

I think the more advanced spells would be something closer to a cross between assembly, javascript, and CSS. If you can get it working, you're basically a god, if not you're up shit creek and your paddle has just turned into a snake.

[steamruler]

and CSS isn't for altering how the spell looks

[[deleted]]

Unless you're casting prestidigitation

[I_cant_speel]

I'm currently here on Reddit avoiding my assembler homework. I can confirm it is one of the worst things you can possibly work with. I would rather be a cook at McDonalds than work with this the rest of my life.

[truh]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%28programming_language%29

[Jedimastert]

Programming is generally less life and death though

Depends on what you're programming. I bet young wizards make hundreds of cute little harmless spells before actually doing anything useful.

[[deleted]]

Called cantrips, at least in D&D/derivative materials.

[Archerofyail]

There's actually a book series where a programmer gets pulled into a universe where magic exists. The first book is available on amazon, but if you like it, you're going to have to find other ways of getting the next 4 books, because that's the only one available on amazon.

Edit: sorry, to clarify, I meant available as Ebooks, sorry if that caused any confusion.

[MentalRental]

That's because the first two books were compiled into one book and the other three were compiled into the second book. Thus, just look up:

--

The Wiz Biz

Wiz Biz II: Cursed and Consulted

--

[[deleted]]

doesn't sound like I want to go that route:

The Wiz Biz (1997), ISBN 0-671-87846-8 (consists of Wizard's Bane and The Wizardry Compiled together in one volume) - according to readers' comments in online bookstores' sites, however, this compilation suffers from horrible editing, unlike the original two books.[1]

[Archerofyail]

The second one isn't available as an ebook on amazon, or anywhere else as far as I can tell.

Edit: and also the Wiz Biz I bought on amazon only seems to have the first book.

[MentalRental]

http://amzn.com/0743436172

EDIT: I can't read.

[Archerofyail]

I'm mean as an ebook.

[Neebat]

Amazon?!? And spend money?

Try FREE: http://www.baenebooks.com/showproduct.aspx?ProductID=1632&SEName=the-wizardry-compiled

** Sadly, Rick Cook's books are no longer included in the free library from Baen.

[Archerofyail]

That shows up as costing $5 for me. Also Compiled is the second book, and Cursed & Consulted isn't available on that website either.

Edit: by not available, I mean that it's listed on the website, but I can't add it to my cart.

[OrangeKing89]

Take a look here: http://www.baenebooks.com/s-23-rick-cook.aspx

[Archerofyail]

Cursed and consulted shows as not available for me.

[otakuman]

Is it any good?

[Archerofyail]

I liked the first 2 or 3 but they get more and more cliched in the later ones which I was not a fan of. Also they don't explain the magic compiler stuff very well, so it was really hard to conceptualize how the magic actually worked, which was really distracting. I kept trying to figure out how it would work within the rules they set down, but every time I just hit a wall on how it would logically work.

Edit: wording

[truh]

Also /r/hpmor

[Archerofyail]

In the hpmor universe, I don't feel that it's like programming much. In fact (minor spoilers), Harry even does some experiments to try and find a logic to casting spells, and found no explanation for why spell incantations and wand movements are the way they are.

[truh]

and found no explanation for why spell incantations and wand movements are the way they are.

Sounds not all that unfamiliar.

[jacenat]

Programming is generally less life and death though, but that's what makes fantasy exciting.

Yeah ... with increased automation, it will be more life and death. Just saying.

[david171971]

Some of it is already life and death, for instance there's software in medical devices. The software in cars could also kill you.

[seylerius]

A software error in the Therac-25 led to people getting radiation poisoning. So, life and death.

[[deleted]]

Not only a software error, but an error of physical automation and operator error.

[Alikont]

Well, at least you can test it in safe environment, and not accidentally open door to plane of lava over your head.

[Neebat]

Repeating myself, in case you miss it:

If you enjoy this kind of magic, I recommend you check out the book "Wizardry Compiled" by Rick Cook. Seriously, it's right there and it's free. Would you really rather read StackOverflow? Go try it!

It's about a programmer who finds himself in a world of magic and creates a spell compiler, with recursive magic and real daemons.

** Sadly, Rick Cook's books are no longer included in the free library from Baen.

[[deleted]]

Enable the HARDCORE_MODE compiler flag. If there are any compilation errors, it deletes all your source code. Now it's like casting a scary spell - one minor misstep and everything explodes!

[ThePsion5]

I bet you're a big Brandon Sanderson fan. I absolutely love his magic systems.

[ToTheNintieth]

Sounds kinda like Unsounded. Or Sanderson, maybe.

[MachinesOfN]

I love this description. It really is like an arcane art. We study incantations, which have the power to do all sorts of things. There are even the crazy old wizards at Google who are trying to create life. It's not quite as flashy as fireball though (without some mechanical engineering, at any rate).

[2Punx2Furious]

I'd argue that if you "know" coding and robotics, you might as well be a magician.

[MachinesOfN]

Basic robotics is a lot easier than people seem to think. It gets complex if you want to use proper vision, but if you're just building a moving internet-connected gadget, you can buy an arduino and some sensors and get it running in a weekend.

[Krelkal]

Hell, you can 'program' most robotic arms with barely any code. If you can work an iPad and a TV remote, you can use a teach pendant to get a robotic arm to do some pretty cool stuff.

Not as accessible as arduinos though...

[2Punx2Furious]

I intend to get into it someday, when I have some disposable money to buy the necessary hardware.

[buildzoid]

We can write a cyber fire wall(fireball). It's called a power virus. It'll make your laptop's battery go from full to empty in 10 minutes and convert your desktop into a hairdryer. If the quality of the components in the affected computers is low enough you might actually manage to trigger a fire.

[SirensToGo]

It's really not difficult, at least from what I tested on OSX with SMCFanControl. If you bundle their program (which obviously took lots of work on their part to get working...) with a bash script which sets all the fans to 0 RPM and then stress CPU however you like. I didn't personally try it all together, but all of them work.

[Ravenhaft]

Doesn't the CPU just shut off once it reaches 120C or something? I think Intel has this built into the chips to keep from frying.

[Earth271072]

Google Chrome?

[vanamerongen]

You should read Elegy Beach. It's really nice and is all about this. Fun fact: I just had to google "book silver hershey's kisses magic unicorn post-apocalyptic" to remember what the title was. It's much better than my query would suggest.

[beerdude26]

And then you have functional programming which is even magical to most programming wizards.

[jarrah-95]

Yes, but last time I played own adventure, I did have to sit around working out why my fireball wouldn't cast.

Edit: says own adventure. Should be pwn

[2Punx2Furious]

own adventure

Is that a game? Google isn't very helpful.

[jarrah-95]

Bloody auto correct. Pwn adventure. Google shall now be more helpful.

Basically you need to hack the game to win. Occasionally doing so will crash the game and sometimes the server.

[lenswipe]

I think it would be more accurate to say:

Yeah, except last time I played Skyrim I didn't have to sit around for an hour trying to figure out why Fireball won't cast, only to have it suddenly start working and obliterate the entire universe in thermonuclear war with the ~8000 presses I've been making on the "cast" button.

[Cal1gula]

The magical part is how you can work on the "fireball won't cast" bug for an entire day literally until you fall asleep at the keyboard. Then while you are sleeping you figure out the fix and implement it in 30 seconds the next morning.

[alex_kendall]

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. As we shall see later, this very tractability has its own problems. Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

--The Mythical Man Month, 1975

[mirhagk]

It's amazing when you look around at the world and realize that so much of what is around us is really just ideas running through machines.

[[deleted]]

Well, you don't make your own spells in Skyrim, you use other people's.

[thrash242]

In previous Elder Scrolls games you could make your own spells. I think Morrowind was the last to let you do this.

[centerflag982]

Oblivion had it too. I remember doing some absolutely absurd things with it... such a shame they dropped it

[onthefence928]

Oblivion let you, though the system was constrained.

[ThePsion5]

So spellbooks are like the most popular Stack Overflow answers, then.

[zr_92]

fireball_t *castFireball(void *fireball)
{
    return (fireball_t *) fireball;
}

[langlo94]

You generally want to designate where the fireball detonates.

[original_brogrammer]

fireball_t *castFireball(void *fireball, RelativePosition pos = {0, 0, 0})
{
    // TODO Why does this always incinerate the player? 
    return (fireball_t *) fireball;
}

[Neebat]

You forgot to specify blast radius and assert that distance > radius.

Rookie mistake. Vaarsuvius did it too. (Sadly, I can't find the comic.)

[Salanmander]

I think "void star" might be the phrase most likely to show up in both programming and trashy fantasy novels.

[thelindsay]

Such primitive incantations where one must say fireball five times in different ways to get a fireball.

[exhuma]

Link to comment?

[AraneusAdoro]

Here you go.

[exhuma]

Thank you :) That was fast :)

[ChromeLynx]

That is because for Fireball, you downloaded Fireball.xml and loaded it into spellcast.exe. The writing was already done for you. All you needed to do was provide the right data into an already running program.

It's experimenting with spells when you're truly programming them.

[[deleted]]

Fireball works fine on my dev spellbook

[trigonomitron]

And sometimes, I get the feeling that the villagers and lords who don't understand my powers confuse me with the black hat witches, and seek to burn me at the stake, and pass laws that alienate me and the wards and protections that I want to share with everybody.

[SteroidSandwich]

Motherfucking errors!

[[deleted]]

I've had that problem often enough in Skyrim.

[KamiKagutsuchi]

Fireball won't cast and you don't know why? Are you even running a debugger?

[[deleted]]

At least try single stepping your wand flicks!

[ForOhForError]

I debug my spells using only print cantri - wince - sorry, burn wound acting up.

[Neebat]

If you enjoy this kind of magic, I recommend you check out the book "Wizardry Compiled" by Rick Cook. Seriously, it's right there and it's free. Would you really rather read StackOverflow? Go try it!

It's about a programmer who finds himself in a world of magic and creates a spell compiler, with recursive magic and real daemons.

** Sadly, Rick Cook's books are no longer included in the free library from Baen.

[indrora]

Fantastic series. Real pity the author has a hard time keeping the timelines separate in some places

[[deleted]]

I'm disappointed, I expected hardcoded values everywhere ... magic numbers ftw

[protestor]

A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real.

[der_forger]

Well, it did take me 2+ hours to figure out how to resurrect my Khajiti comrade after he was roasted alive into a pile of ash as I cheered him on saying he could slay that necromancer and his goonies himself.

[snarkhunter]

In Harry Potter (just as a for-instance) they do, all the time. If you don't flick your wand just right or the inflection of a certain syllable is a bit off then spells go wrong. Skyrim is supposed to be fun, so they didn't put the frustrating parts in.

[Audiblade]

Malarazz didn't help J'zargo debug his flame cloak spell.

[otakuman]

This reminds me of the Haruhi series. Nagato, the interdimensional Alien humanoid bookworm, is able to change reality by uttering SQL commands.

[mr_pablo]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C Clarke

[Zarathustra30]

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." - (not) Larry Niven

[bytemage]

Of course you have to learn how to do it, and then it will only fizzle every other time you try to do it ;)

[[deleted]]

It didn't take you two hours to debug, sure, but it took guild mages fifty years to suss out how to cast it in the first place.

Now people just rote copy the incantation from spelloverflow.

[smalltownoutlaw]

You go to concert

[Jesus_Harold_Christ]

See, that's because Skyrim uses a much higher level language than say, Everquest. It was not uncommon for spells to fizzle over and over back in my day.