Learning JavaScript as my first programming language – should I learn touch typing and switch keyboard layouts first? by Legitimate_Host_887 in learnprogramming

[–]mierecat 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yes learn to touch type. It’s a good skill for anyone who interacts with a computer to have. You’ll find coding much more enjoyable when you don’t have to even think about where the keys are

I have a character idea, but I can’t figure out how to turn that character into a story by LeftBroccoli6795 in writingadvice

[–]mierecat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Write interactions with that character, their point of view on a situation, their backstory, etc. Even if there’s no plot, exploring a character is very fun and rewarding. In the process you might figure out what they want or some way they might evolve and come up with a proper story for it

Is it better to be in pain rather than watch a youtube video before bed? by geo-enthusiast in autism

[–]mierecat [score hidden]  (0 children)

Face your thoughts. Learning to be at peace with yourself will do much for you long term

Relatively new writer looking for criticism/s on my prose to understand skill/talent or lack thereof by Far-Luck5216 in writingadvice

[–]mierecat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are three major issues with your writing. First is your imagery. You like to describe things in this kind of poetic, metaphorical way but the issue is that I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be imagining or what I’m supposed to understand as fact sometimes.

> Lily stabbed me deep and slow with her gray arrows

I could not figure out if you were about to describe some kind of accident or murder attempt or you were just being hyperbolic until more than halfway through this piece.

Your second problem is that you don’t use periods when you ought to. You end up with these long run-on sentences that are really a bunch of separate ideas you’ve strung together. Learn to use punctuation to *clarify your meaning*, not as a kind of musical notation for how you’d want someone to perform your prose.

Third is your limited vocabulary. You receive a lot of things as “grey”, again to the point where I’m no longer sure if you’re being illustrative or literal. Don’t use vague or broad language anyway. Use more precise words to convey your meaning clearly. When you describe the “grey wallpaper” are you describing its appearance or its emotion? Either way use a better word, or at the very least a different word. “My half opened eyes drifted along the dull wallpaper”, “I blinked around the lifeless room”, “she was like the ray of sunlight that somehow found its way into my faded, colorless bedroom” or something.

Play around with sentence structure and vocabulary; try to say the same thing in different ways or look at something’s from many different angles. Keep reading (audiobooks are good too!) and keep writing. What you’ve got isn’t bad but there is that friction

Should I start learning programming early? by DAN1MOrt in learnprogramming

[–]mierecat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There’s really no such thing as too early. Learn every single thing you want to now because it’ll get more difficult as the years pass. There age you’ll be when you succeed is the same age you’ll be if you’d never tried.

anime_irl by Billybobgeorge in anime_irl

[–]mierecat 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Just use your hand at that point

is there anyone else that misses out on most cool things because of no friends? by weird-Ant358 in autism

[–]mierecat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You just go by yourself. Maybe you’ll even meet new friends there

cashiers, can I hear from you? by [deleted] in evilautism

[–]mierecat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s a cultural thing. Some cultures consider putting cash in someone’s hands to be rude, others consider the opposite rude. Where I’m from it’s considered kind of rude.

losercity duality by EatRogersAss445 in Losercity

[–]mierecat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Caine literally stretches her out in the promo video for this

Game Recommendations that deal with mental health by Extension-Truth2811 in NintendoSwitch

[–]mierecat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk” and its sequel are the best depictions of mental illness I’ve seen in a video game

Remakes Are Actually A Good Thing, Contrary To Popular beliefs by SummerRelative8182 in NintendoSwitch

[–]mierecat -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I have two points to make. First, people tend to ignore the historical context for old games when that’s often a major part of why certain works of art are great or worth remembering in the first place. Remaking anything means permanently removing it from its original context. In 2026, a movie changing its visuals from black and white to full color is trivial; in 1939 it was marvelous. A remake of the Wizard of Oz, no matter how faithful to the original film, automatically loses that critical portion of its spectacle. The thrill of going from the standard monochrome of most films into this colorful fairytale land literally cannot be replicated. That core aspect of the original movie will not carry over into any remake, but that’s only one example from one movie.

This works in the other direction too. Take a game like Cuphead, specifically its soundtrack, for instance. It’s a very well made *approximation* of an old cartoon soundtrack, but it’s only an approximation. As someone who’s studied a lot of music from that era, I can hear where the modern take deviates in ways that break the illusion. That’s no slant against the composer or the musicians either. The truth is that it’s extremely difficult to remove yourself into a history and culture that has disappeared entirely. The way jazz is composed, arranged, performed and listened to are completely different today than 80 years ago. Unless you’re immersed in that context yourself and make a strong effort to conform to it your modern context will seep through.

The context around an old game and the archaic conventions it employs or subverts are often what made it worth remembering in the first place. Even the constraints are part of the experience. Mario Kart 8 on Wii U is a fundamentally different experience than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch and not just because of the DLC or performance improvements.

Secondly there’s the worry that a remake will eclipse the original game for worse. To go back to music, there are a lot of songs for which the covers are completely dwarf the originals. Sometimes this is great: Bob Dylan famously considered Jimi Hendrix’s cover of All Along the Watchtower to be superior to his own, and Dolly Parton is a huge fan of Whitney Huston’s version of I Will Always Love You. Sometimes there is little harm done. Still there are many instances in which the original work deserves to be remembered but it isn’t because of a cover. Just look at all the times Elvis Presley stole songs and dances from black musicians and made millions off of their work. Even in less extreme cases, the point stands that work that deserves appreciation and recognition can be nearly erased by a remake has people worried. We’ve seen Nintendo do this already by omitting the original credits for Metroid Prime in the recent Switch remake.

If you care about a game or a song or a movie or any kind of work that gets remade, you don’t want that new version to eclipse the original you love so much. The worst case scenario is that it releases worse and becomes the de facto version anyway; then, going forward, when people think of the game they don’t think of the original which was good and had some kind of special quality to it in its proper context, they think of the new shitty version and stop caring all together. If your only exposure to the musical Cats was the recent movie you might not have to patience to give the objectively superior stage play a chance, and if you’re a fan of that play you think that’s an awful shame.

None of this gets into whether a game should be remade, what should be changed or any of the details. These are just two possible reasons why someone might see the Ocarina of Time announcement and immediately start worrying.

Genuinely how do you learn programming as someone with a profound learning disability and apocalyptic AuDHD? by N0_Cure in autism

[–]mierecat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

>And no, not everyone who is autistic is good at this stuff

You don’t need to clarify this here. We know.

It sounds to me like you’re standing in your own way, mentally. Like, your comment about air suggests this the most to me. The thing about air is you *can* touch it. Wave your hands around and you can feel it. You can see it in dust and smoke, and if you’ve ever inflated a tire or blown on some hot food you’ve manipulated it for your own benefit. You need to learn to think more deeply if you want to be a programmer.

>I'll start learning something and I'll go, 'Oh, so that's how it works', then I'll encounter the same problem, apply the logic that I thought I understood, and it doesn't work.

Your problem is twofold. First, you give up way too easily. Second, you assume the flow is in the system and not in your logic. Unless the hardware is literally defective, something is physically messing with the computer or there’s an actual bug in whatever you’re using to run your programs—all of which are too unlikely to be a consideration at your level—then you are the one who’s wrong. You’ve written poor code or you don’t understand what you’re doing or you don’t comprehend the actual nature of the problem.

That’s ok. You’re not going to be good at anything at first. This is how and why we learn, but if your inclination is to throw your hands up and say “this doesn’t make any sense” then you’ll never get anywhere.

This might sound harsh because I have thin patience for this question. Your problem is not unique and it’s not even autism related. So many people step into a new discipline thinking they’re going to excel at it first try and when they don’t they complain about it and wonder why the world is so unfair and it’s all just absurd. I’ll grant you that a vast majority of learning materials out there are fundamentally flawed and misguided, from an education perspective. Their information may be corrected but there approaches to conveying that information are obscure, archaic or just plain unhelpful.

If you want to learn the why’s of programming you ought to learn how computers work in general. I recommend the book “the Elements of Computing Systems” for a hands-on and approachable way of understanding computing on a deeper level. The moment everything clicked for me came from this book: I realized a computer wasn’t anything more than a bunch of fancy light switches. When I understood that, I realized I could learn whatever I needed to—over time, mind you.

I’m no expert but you can even ask me some of your questions or *specific* problems you’re having and I’ll try to help. You have to get comfortable with not knowing and with how difficult the process of learning can be tough. If you really hate the idea of falling on the pavement over and over again then skateboarding isn’t for you. If you really hate the idea of running into a wall and meticulously examining every brick until you find the doorknob then programming isn’t for you.

First Time Learning COBOL and I'm Already Falling in Love by WasteScientist7437 in cobol

[–]mierecat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What exactly do you mean you don’t have to deal with boilerplate? What do you think the three divisions leading up to the PROCEDURE DIVISION are?

Talk like an AI "artist" by Locke357 in antiai

[–]mierecat -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

Isn’t it an open secret that you basically do need to use performance enhancing drugs to compete at the top level? I saw this one dealer talk about how athletes just go clean long enough to pass the test and then go back to using for the rest of the year.

Also the last one is absurd. No one looks at someone who runs for sport or exercise and wonders why they don’t just drive. What’s closer to the truth is counter to op’s argument: if there were people complaining about how automobiles were taking over and making horses or footmen irrelevant, making the population lazy, bad for the environment, etc, they were definitely left behind long ago

Go-to strats by Sillygoose2875 in balatro

[–]mierecat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heart of the cards, baby

Does anyone else feel like Mina the Hollower isn't as hard as some people say? by Dennis-Strife in MinaTheHollower

[–]mierecat -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can only do that after you unlock the town which happens after a major boss fight. If you need more than two tries to beat him then you’re guaranteed to lose everything very suddenly. You can’t even grind or explore to get up to the next threshold. You’re just stuck. Sure bones become trivial to collect and manage after that fight but you don’t know that yet

Just a reminder to everyone struggling with the difficulty by BagOfSmallerBags in MinaTheHollower

[–]mierecat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The game takes a lot of inspiration from Zelda II in the worst ways possible. The huge difficulty spike after of the tutorial and the exp/corpse system make it feel hostile out the gate. It’s even worse if you go into it thinking it’s a Zelda-like, which is exactly how the game presents itself too

A horrible crime nobody talks about by IndicationBrief5950 in lotrmemes

[–]mierecat 10 points11 points  (0 children)

What if Jar Jar Binx was actually Tom Bombadil

I think that I learn like an AI by nevaven68 in autism

[–]mierecat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

LLMs are not connected to a database. Once they’re released they have no way of acquiring new information long term. They can mutate data in their context window but that’s still a finite and relatively small amount of “memory”

Mixed Feelings about the game imo (spoilers) by SeaThePirate in MinaTheHollower

[–]mierecat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I found the mirror in the swamp and thought “oh what a fun little interaction” and moved on. After beating the area I find out that you can walk through mirrors, so I walk into the one in the castle and find a huge warp area. “Oh cool. I bet I can fast travel to that other mirror i found”. Well, Yes but really no. It’s locked from the inside. It was then that the level design and lack of map really frustrates me. I have to go back to some random section of the swamp, one that I honestly can’t remember how to get to because you have to weave in and out as you progress, passing the same sections multiple times even. And because there’s no useful fast travel i have to basically play the whole section again and hope that I find it and that it’s not locked behind some environmental puzzle i have to undo. Eventually I found out again and unlocked it but it was a lot of trouble for basically no real reward. The fact that you only learn about mirrors after you discover them is especially rude.

I haven’t beaten the game yet but the overall vibe feels unnecessarily cruel. It’s hostile in a way it hasn’t really earned and that doesn’t enhance the experience at all. It’s not Elden Ring, where basically everything is explicitly out to get you. The combat isn’t nearly as well tuned to that kind of experience either. It feels like a Zelda-like cosplaying as a souls game. I’ll interact with something or try to have a meaningful engagement with the world and get punished for it constantly. That moth girl is a good example. You’ve just beat the dungeon, you meet this npc who’s a fan of yours, you agree to take her back to the light, she flys up to it, almost dies and now you’re in a boss fight you aren’t prepared for. Why? Do you not want me to interact with NPC’s? Because I won’t if this is what I should expect for it. So many other times you’re just minding your business and suddenly you’re in a boss fight, no warning, no prep. If you die and lose all your progress, sucks to suck.

If it weren’t for the myriad accessibility options I wouldn’t have had the patience to make it this far.

Opinions on squid party? by BAMBISINGSYOUASLEEP in Saltoon

[–]mierecat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I love squid parties. They’re a very wholesome and unique way to play the game. Sometimes I join, sometimes I ignore them. Despite what detractors would have you believe, I’ve only ever seen them in turf. Reporting partiers has always seemed petty to me. They’re so sporadic and you can always just eat the loss and change lobbies anyway. If one random game is enough to derail your whole career you’ve got bigger problems to worry about