Sei KayDec 7, 2024
Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️

It's gonna be real annoying to be a programmer once we've invented time travel, what with the future selves showing up all the time demanding answers.

Mainly about what the code does, how it works, why did you do it this way, why is this breaking this way, help me debug it, and so on.

Dec 6, 2024 at 6:04amWeb
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024

the embarrassing thing is how short into the future they'll be coming back from for some of this.

because like, if you're in your 60s trying to revive some game you made as a teenager, fair play, I can see why you'd do that.

but next Tuesday? REALLY? REALLY?

Show thread *Aya Freya ⋆.˚🦦⋆ - NeptuwuniumDec 6, 2024
@foone normal people: going back in time to correct big canon events in history

me: going back in time to ask why this game from the 90s checked not a single value in the file header and just seeks to a random hardcoded offset
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024
@ada well it's not like I wouldn't use it for that too, it's just that even afterwards in that utopian timeline, I'm still gonna be a programmer... with a time machine.
Show threadFi 🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024

@foone

I mean, you can already do this if you leave "why the hell I'm doing this like this" comments in your codebase; I've thought about how to explain stuff to my future self when documenting in the past

Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024
@munin oh of course. and I'd definitely do that a lot more if I was always at risk of future!foone popping out of a portal and yelling at me.
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024
@munin although the annoying part of being a trans programmer with a time machine is that every time I go back more than a certain number of years, I have to spend a while explaining why I'm a girl now, on top of all the usual "why I have a time machine now" stuff. It's just the same conversation every single time, and I get tired.
Show threadFi 🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024

@foone

I mean, documentation solves this too - print a zine, lol

Show threadRonanDec 6, 2024
@foone On every friday I’d get back to each day of the week to ask myself what I’m doing 'cause I need to fill the time sheet.
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2024
@RonanLK god yeah I would too
Show threadyomimono, still on landDec 6, 2024

@foone huh, I think I would probably be as reluctant to ask myself this stuff as I am to ask other people. Why spend 30 seconds asking someone to explain something when I could puzzle over it for half a day?

Instead I would be haunted by past selves constantly catching glimpses of me from afar like scientists observing wildlife, looking for fuckups to avert. Just constantly trying to subvert “experience is the thing you get after you needed it”. Also stealing my jokes :(

Show threadwlf_warrenDec 6, 2024

@foone

guess, you just ask,

your later self

who solved it...

or is that compatible?

with stepping off the


'time travel path'

and

squishing the 🐛

😲

😬

🫤 ...

HA

🤣

Show threadI AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥Dec 6, 2024
@foone "but, you wrote this specific code ten minutes ago in your timeline. How can you not remember what it does? Don't give me that self-documenting nonsense. I invented time travel specifically to come back to ask you about this line."
Show threadDanielDec 6, 2024
@foone It's really the other way around. When I start with a project, future me gets back with the finished version. But present me will blame future me for doing such a half-assed job. The thing is, you still have to write the program initially so you can send it to the past, and motivation is really low to do that when you already have the finished product. "Why do I have to do this, it's probably right over there!" (But, if you try to cheat, that's always the stuff missin / never written...)
Show threadAnders StenbergDec 6, 2024
@foone Not to mention what it'll do to dates and time zone handling.
Show threadElizabethDec 6, 2024
@foone we're not talking enough about the pain it's gonna be working with timezones when that happens
Show threadtoebeans ch. 🇨🇳    Dec 7, 2024
@foone i feel like itd be more vicious violence for me