[Freeciv-Dev] Re: hobby as process? (was Re: Migration)

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Raimar Falke [mailto:i-freeciv-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> >
> > Is this about process rather than results?
>
> Yes. You can try yourself on problems where you didn't got the
> opportunities to tackle these in your regular job.

Why not invest one's energies into changing one's regular job?  Not
wanting the responsibility, the risk, or the work that it would entail?
I mean really, if you've been a database coder for umpteen years but you
have always longed to be an AI coder, why haven't you changed your
career?  Are you addicted to fat paychecks and lavish lifestyles or
something?

> This may by doing
> an AI or the task of reducting the bandwidth usage of the protocol
> used. You can also see what certain tools are worth if you push them
> against a non-trivial code base you know.

Ok, what *are* your tools worth?  For all these years of effort, you
have produced: Civ II.  In C.  My tool is my wallet.  I bought Civ II:
Test Of Time, which has better graphics than your Civ II, for $20 at
full retail 4 years ago.  I think your tools are worth $20.

Your tools are worthless unless you actually use them to build something
better than Civ II.  Unless, of course, your tools are entirely about
the process of writing them.  In that case, they have no value to anyone
but you and the small community that writes them.

Maybe your tools are about holding together a community.  Irrational to
me, maybe highly valuable to you and your peers.

> You can learn how to spot
> errors in your code and the code of others.

Are you young enough to still give a shit about this?  Haven't you done
enough industrial programming already for this to have gotten old?  Of
course I care about *preventing* errors, but certainly not how "neat" it
is to run around debugging them.

> You can learn about
> problems and their solutions which you normally won't touch you.

Nothing is stopping any of you from spending your entire careers
touching them, except your own life choices.

Choose something bold for a change.  What's the boldest thing you could
do with Freeciv?  Why be timid when there's no money on the line at all?
Haven't you guys figured out what you *really* want out of the 4X TBS
genre?

Haven't you guys ever said, "Screw this cubicle stuff, let's go start a
game company!"


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.