I recently started playing Factorio, and I kept thinking that this is what "low code" integration/automation tools should look like. Developer tooling with extremely clear visuals, obvious dataflow, endless combinations into which the rigidly defined components can be assembled to do exactly what they do.
As opposed to so many takes on "flow based" programming, which present some imperfect nodal representation of the program, but rarely can the user make sense of what's going on by seeing stuff moving around as the thing executes.
And by the way, be sure you're ready to sink some time in if you're curious about this game...it's just too good, and I've had to consciously reduce the time I'm spending, because I could just keep optimizing...building...expanding...optimizing...it's built in the shape of the reward center of my brain.
>it's built in the shape of the reward center of my brain
Yes, it's like a distillation of the feeling I get from the most enjoyable parts of my job, risking productivity loss from real world responsibilities until the complexity rises high enough to require project organization and advanced planning of tasks that are the least enjoyable parts of my job, along the lines of:
"Crap, I have a sudden urgent need to deal with enemies creeping out from beyond my radar range that will push back operationalization of my proof-of-concept production pipeline. I'd estimate 3 man hours are required to perform a one-off fix on the enemies & radar expansion, maybe 5 to automate long-term... damnit I need a break, let me VPN into work to decompress from Factorio stress."
Too many to list. This past week’s productivity was partially hijacked by a vendor relationship gone sour to the point of getting the lawyers involved.
And so if sales are biters, where do lawyers rank?
This is actually a pretty great analogy. Could be even closer if the biters came in and stole materials, or replaced things on cargo belts as well as just trying to destroy things.
> And by the way, be sure you're ready to sink some time in if you're curious about this game...it's just too good, and I've had to consciously reduce the time I'm spending, because I could just keep optimizing...building...expanding...optimizing...it's built in the shape of the reward center of my brain.
I feel the same. It scratches so many itches. I made the mistake of installing Space Exploration mod after the first run… so many hours invested now.
It adds hundreds of hours of gameplay, new endings, multiple planets, and much longer progression chains that really push your ability to optimize to the limit.
If the base game isn’t enough to keep you interested anymore because it’s gotten too simple, space exploration is a good hand grenade to mix things up.
The negative thing about SE is also that it adds hundreds of hours of gameplay. I’m 200 hours in and I’ve barely made it to other planets. The 2 hours a day I have to play with it are simply not enough.
I am interested in this topic, so thank you for mentioning it.
I haven't played Factorio but this article GIFs helped me understand it, at least from a high level simplistic perspective!
I think most of programming is just logistics: moving data from one place to another, picking and choosing what fields to use for a given purpose and then calling a function with those selected parameters or talking to another system.
I am working on a number of experiments in this area. I'm working on a programming environment which is unlike programming languages where you specify instructions and the state is implied but you work directly with state and instructions are implied.
The problem with nodal editors is that they're not very information dense.
As opposed to so many takes on "flow based" programming, which present some imperfect nodal representation of the program, but rarely can the user make sense of what's going on by seeing stuff moving around as the thing executes.
And by the way, be sure you're ready to sink some time in if you're curious about this game...it's just too good, and I've had to consciously reduce the time I'm spending, because I could just keep optimizing...building...expanding...optimizing...it's built in the shape of the reward center of my brain.