Listen, in high fantasy settings you typically get a cod-mediaeval society coexisting beside starships'n'deathray-equivalent magic, right?
So there's got to be a REASON why the folks plodding along behind the mule don't have any truck with flying carpets etc.
My money is on: magic is like software; so you get an integer overflow and your flying carpet turns into a fungal network that eats you alive.
And have you ever MET a wizard? Would YOU use an enchanted broom That Guy created as an MVP?
@cstross
Seems a bit too easy an analogy to make since that was about what the early Unix types were evoking.
Come on. Having your software interact with daemons (and often unreliable daemons at that)?
All the same, I could see having a lot of fun with the idea.
@cstross
Oh, Magical Systemd IS there, somewhere underlying ALL of the magical OS. Likely under some other name (Cthulhu?), but certainly there.
Now, what is the magical equivalent of the Emacs/Vi conflict?
@cstross
OK. Let's try to break the internet....
If Emac vs Vi can be read as D&D wizards vs clerics, which would map to which?
@jks @cstross @jrholmes I've struggled over the years to come up with a decent parody of "Pickman's Model" about someone unraveling a terrible domain model for a network service or somesuch, going mad in the process, and ending with almost the same phrase as the original ("But by God, Eliot, it was an object schema from life"). But it doesn't exactly write itself without feeling super forced.
This sounds better.
@cstross “Discworld” initially took the approach that magic isn’t reusable; each spell you learn can be used once and then has to be re-learned.
But later it more or less took the same angle as Pixar’s “Onward”, where technology is just plain easier for folks to use once it’s been created. Fire magic must be learned, but light bulbs just need to be turned on.
Basically: Flying carpets are either rare or require extensive magical training. Carts and mules are easy and plentiful.
@cstross if magic was half as messed up as JavaScript development, then every so often millions of enchantments would fail because somebody removed one from circulation *cough* leftpad *cough*.
Which may be why the peasants don't bother - if these fancy enchangements [sic] fall apart if you look at them, why bother using them?
@cstross The problem is that magical software startups need VC funding, and the dragons have all the gold.
So you have to go to them, and if they don't like your pitch deck, they char-broil you.
@cstross
Energy efficiency. The cost in resources to create a magical artifact to achieve a task is several multiples of the cost to achieve it mundanely. Therefore only the supremely wealthy (or those who extract resources from others at little hardship to themselves, but I repeat myself) can & will expend those additional resources.
So Lord Farquhar will happily sacrifice 100 peasants to charge the wand of death that will kill 1 enemy, while Sven the Forester will just use his axe.
@cstross Try to imagine software development without the internet.
Sure, it's magic, you can give the rock anxiety, but you have to move the rock. You have to write down the instructions on vellum; you have to transport the instructions with the rock. You can't ask anyone any questions without either sending them a letter or standing next to them to talk.
Peasants don't use magic because they can't afford it; the Moore's Law cost collapse doesn't happen.
@cstross When you _do_ get the community of practice/mad brilliance necessary for the capability cascade, you usually also get a Big Oops somewhere and an outcome equivalent to being devoured by demons. This doesn't always happen, but it's the way to bet.
When it doesn't happen you get someone with a Very Shiny Rock whom the prudent leave entirely alone; even if they want to help you, odds are they won't understand your problem and you won't understand their attempt to help.
@cstross Well, there you go, then!
Like that, but with candles and no paper and boiling oak galls for ink and instructions that have got smudged/been gnawed on by mice/lightly charred in spots instead of trying to type in BASIC from a computer magazine.
@karchie @cstross If you can print books!
Charlie starts off with cod-medieval; they can't print books. They can't make paper for books, either, your book production limitations include "grazing land".
You could get a whole series of books over stealing the (especially good) exemplar shiny rock a rival university uses to teach people how to make their own shiny rocks. You could get "this is insane" plot lines by looking up the history of theft of saint's relics, too.
Don’t forget APL and LISP, both predating SNOBOL (APL, as a language instead of a notation, was roughly contemporary with MUMPS, I think).
Interestingly, both APL and LISP basically started as *notations* — a better, parchment-preserving means to remember your incantations.
APL also has the cachet of arcane symbols.
@lain_7 @cstross @karchie The dread phrase "formal grammar" starts to creep in, here, and you get magic instruction that's purely grammar ("how to express your desires in a magically rigorous way") and doesn't in any way tell you how to do anything operant.
(Anyone who remembers checking grammars with wetware can start to predict just how much you don't want these people casting spells. But, hey, economical of resources.)
Of course the folks from operant traditions won't talk to them.
@cstross @graydon @lain_7 @karchie
There will also be predators... as soon as someone suitably unscrupulous works out what one of those failing-safe languages *should* look like, then there is a big fat bait for suckers.
The currency that grift pays in is probably best not thought about.
(Someone, or some Thing.)
@cstross @graydon @lain_7 @karchie
Reminds me of
(Edit to provide correct original credit)
Jim Benton Cartoons by Jim Benton for September 28, 2015 - GoComics — https://www.gocomics.com/jim-benton-cartoons/2015/09/28
(Removed my originally posted link to imitation)
Alex Darby // darbotron🛹
Charlie Stross
John Maxwell
Ole-Morten 🚀👨🚀🌻📚
Sebastian Müller
JR Holmes
S Aufrecht
Jouni Seppänen
John
dstu
Alexander Janßen
schrotthaufen
Tim
Yrjänä Rankka 🌻
Luka Rubinjoni
DeterioratedStucco
Seiðr
Settantahertz
Mighty Orbot
Philip Rowlands
Alberto Cottica
Rob Landley
Bill Seitz
Colin
Martin Frost
Dr Andrew A. Adams #FBPE 🔶
Angus McIntyre
HighlandLawyer
Fish Id Wardrobe ⁂
Graydon
AMS
Kevin Marks
Another Person
Kevin Archie
David Mankins
Pseudo Nym
acb
Rafe Culpin
Stewart Russell