PRACTICE 2018: Joseph White

What Hacker News said

Strong rec Impossible · 2019-08 · on “Pico-8 Virtual Fantasy Console is an idealized constrained modern day game maker”

I'm a huge Pico-8 fan and suggest that anyone that is interested in Pico-8 watch Joseph White's (the creator) Practice (NYU game designer conference) talk about the design philosophy of Pico-8. [this video] . The TLDW of the talk is that he explicitly tried to built a "cozy" game development environment with enough constraints in place to encourage creativity without the stress of starting from a completely blank canvas. At the end Scott Hanselman has a footnote about building or buying a physical Pico-8 console. One thing that is missing is most Pico-8 consoles focus on the play aspect of Pico-8, not the creation aspect of Pico-8 which is just as important to me if not more so. I own a PocketCHI

Recommends Impossible · 2018-10 · on “Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?”

All of these are explicit design choices, for example a fixed palette is important to give games a "Pico-8" look and also reduce decisions regarding color choice. I suggest you watch Joseph White's practice talk ( [this video] ) if you're curious about design decisions that guided Pico-8. Multiple resolutions would absolutely break the "Fantasy console" feel of Pico-8, even though I understand why programmers universally hate that. To be fair a lot of people do code editing outside of the Pico-8 editor. #4 is an interesting point. The trick here is that different parents have different ideas of what is and isn't appropriate, and of course different kids will have different responses. It seems lik

Recommends havercosine · 2022-12 · on “The cloudy layers of modern-day programming (or what programming has become)”

I agree that most of the routine software work feels like, umm, filling forms? The way I've made peace with it is to accept that the work that pays the bills is going to be boring. After considering ourselves to be special as software developers for many years, maybe we accept that it is not so special after all, like flipping burgers. Two ways to out from the existential dread: one startup on a problem statement that feels exciting to you, so that you get to pick your tools, processes and what not. But this is not a realistic/affordable option for most people. Also, if your startup achieves even a moderate level of success, you'll be back to solving boring problems. The other is to find a p

Cites meheleventyone · 2019-01 · on “Scratch 3.0”

I mean it’s definitely a way to enjoy things. But the intent of zep who made it was to create a cozy design space. He gave a talk about it last year: [this video]