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Coding Lessons…from Factorio?

Joe Zack on March 21, 2019

Factorio is a game where you are a teeny tiny engineer has been stranded on a very large and hostile alien world. Your goal is to build a rocket an...
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jeikabu

Factorio is still sitting in my Steam wish list.

A bunch of years ago I read an article by someone (Mike Acton?) that said something to the effect of SpaceChem being like PS3 SPU (SIMD) programming. For a while I toyed with the idea of using it as a test for potential hires. =)

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Joe Zack • Edited

I've heard of the Zachtronics games a few times, but have yet to really play them. I always thought Opus Magnum looked like a lot of fun. It's on sale today too, sold!

Might as well pick up Space Chem while I'm at it, though it looks a bit daunting :)

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Jabawaka

I found SpaceChem a bit easier than Opus, maybe I was just younger and had more time to burn though.

If they appeal to you, gave a look at Shenzen I/O, you have to program chips with constrained resources in a fake assembler. I found the difficulty curve quite staisfactory.

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jeikabu

I'd never even looked that they have other games. Into the depths of my wish list they go! Thanks for the suggestions.

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Jabawaka

It was a good read and a very good analogy. Too good even, as in my current playthrough I am stuck in rerouting all the raw inputs to the main two factories I have, which feels like having to do a massive refactor in a big software project!

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Jonathan Higgs

I think #6 has some links to sacrificial architecture, at each stage the base you are building is just a bootstrap for the next scale that you are going for. It isn’t going to handle the next level of scale but it will be faster to build it to automate some tasks and then trash it when you have robots

I had been a dev for quite a while before I started playing, but it taught me so much about the process of writing code. Automating the simple but repetitive tasks as far a possible is absolutely key to achieving any sort of productivity

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Daniel Escoz • Edited

Oh, please let's start a DEV.to unofficial-official Factorio server. Please please please.

Oh and before I forget: The Factory Grows

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Joe Zack

The Factory will grow evermore

:)

I saw a video with 159 people playing in a single Factorio game, it worked out surprisingly well except for a couple jokers that were saving the game and slowing things down.

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£.j

i really enjoyed reading this