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So I bought much of the Yakuza franchise to keep me occupied
I started with Yakuza 6, then played 5 and 4. It's interesting playing them in reverse order because each older version offered me something a newer one didn't. In 4, some of the interactive dialogue is more contextual compared to later versions, like when you beat up baddies. In 5 (like 4) you have multiple playable characters and in 4 and 5 the combat mechanics are far more articulated than in 6, whereas 6 is simply a (very enjoyable) button masher game.
In short, I can recommend all the games. Playing one isn't too much like playing the others even though all are familiar. Basically if you enjoy one of them, it's worth getting all of them. I have yet to play Yakuza 3 yet but I bought it as part of a bundle. I expect it's more difficult than the others, based on what I've read.
On to Mad Max. Mad Max is an aesthetically very pleasing game. It's just as gritty and post-apocalyptic as the movie that shares its namesake. The characters so far are enjoyable. The trouble is, it's not such an easy game for a casual gamer like myself. I generally like RPGs because I can make up for my lack of button timing and such by leveling my characters early and often. In this game there's not really an opportunity for that, at least not early on. The trouble then is, I keep getting my behind handed to me by War Boys in basic fights. The driving and fighting is enjoyable, it's just that the fighting is difficult. I haven't played past the 1st part of the game because I got frustrated. I can still recommend it, but I don't recommend it for casual gamers. There's not even a difficulty setting.
Real programmers use butterflies
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All work and no play aside, I thought you were planning to write a state machine article, not indulge frivolous pursuits. 
Do you learn any Japanese from the Yakuza franchise?
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I changed my mind about the state machine thing. I wasn't getting my head around it and heart behind it, and I didn't want to force the thing.
I think I learned some swearing in Japanese. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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binge watching week bit of a mix.
1. star trek picard: well (ignoring the reduced budget sfx) OK star trek, obvious plot. clearly (age of actors) not designed to be an enduring spin off. where does star trek go next?
2. strike back: OK, but how many times can you tell the same story without covering it up with more gun play? It was a good ending (as in should be all over now.)
3. dispatches from elsewhere: first 4 eps were good, after that just stupid nonsense and then the ending completely undid the last semblance of any merit it ever had. please, no more, not ever. (side note: hopefully not career ending for the main cast because the acting by all 4 main cast was superb.)
4. westworld: actually not bad, worth the look. (it's a show really not trying to be anything else) there's enough left for the next season, but it'll have to be the last.
5. watchmen. actually quite a surprise: having only glanced at the summaries it was pleasantly a lot different than I expected. should have been all done but they just couldn't help themselves from finishing it without a lose thread. (my suggestion for S2: that explosion at the end -> lots of little blue men calamari smurfs? - because I really don't see how they could make any sensible sequel for adults.)
gotta do something with all this extra time off, too retired to bother leaning new stuff, living in an apartment so gardening isn't a thing and beyond my control traveling is off the table.
pestilence [ pes-tl-uh ns ] noun
1. a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. especially bubonic plague.
2. something that is considered harmful, destructive, or evil.
Synonyms: pest, plague, CCP
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lopatir wrote: too retired to bother leaning new stuff,
It is something of a challenge, but I have learned .NET and C#, Python, and a bit of Web forms since I retired. But there are plenty of other things you may find interesting.
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lopatir wrote: 1. star trek picard: well (ignoring the reduced budget sfx) OK star trek, obvious plot. clearly (age of actors) not designed to be an enduring spin off. where does star trek go next?
I think they are doing another prequel with the original Christopher Pike character.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Star Trek Discovery or another spin-off? I didn't watch the first season, but got into it with season 2.
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It's a new spin off: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds[^] - no idea when it will start shooting, Covid-19 made a mess of everyone's schedules.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Covid-19 made a mess of everyone's schedules.
Really? - I hadn't noticed! 
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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In December I bought a bundle of 12 Python courses for the price of probably just one course. I am on my second course now and loving it; I can't believe I've not done this much earlier. What I'm really amazed at is all the power available in easily available packages. So far we've already done some machine learning and basic image recognition, GIS, and graphing: things I would not have ever considered while coding in C# unless asked for a specific deliverable. The libraries, built-in and external, are all so quick and easy to get started on but extremely powerful.
I foresee lots of new articles starting as soon as I finish my second course and go back to that and the first one and explore all the libraries we've covered.
"'Do what thou wilt...' is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself."
—Aleister Crowley
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Python is very powerful (I mean the ecosystem), and I thinking to include it as a scripting language in one of my projects... However, that white-space driven scope drives me crazy... It is way to fragile...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Yeah, that kind of scoping is scary.
"'Do what thou wilt...' is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself."
—Aleister Crowley
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Quote: However, that white-space driven scope drives me crazy... It is way to fragile...
That's not the only thing that's fragile; having type errors detected only at runtime is far worse than whitespace scoping. There's nothing like deploying an app and getting type errors the first time the user gives it the one bizarre combination of inputs that isn't in your unit-tests.
Static languages catch these types of errors before giving you an executable to run; dynamic languages only figure out the type at runtime.
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Both are equally bad.
And these two are among my three top ranking reasons for trying to avoid Python. I don't know how to order them, with the third one: The way Python has created its own closed world, essentially not relating to anything non-Python.
You can't just write a library function in Python to be called from another language. You can't just write a library function in another language and just link it with the Python code. ... Well, yes, you sort of can, when a number of preconditions are met, and using a few tricks. But you are not really supposed to.
Python installation and updating goes by its own mechanisms. Of course Python has its own documentation standards and tools. And 70% (or thereabouts) of all Python programs must indicate in the implementation language in the program name. (Even Visual Basic programmers don't feel a need to give their programs names starting with "vb"!)
For decennies, OSes defined a relocatable format used by "all" languages. The format defind a standard stack layout and calling convention for all languages. In those days, types were mostly hardware defined, but it wasn't uncommon to see standards for the layout of structs as well. The result was that you to a large degree could write each module of your system in the language best suited for the task, and link it all together.
Today, ARM is promoting a single Application Binary Interface to make mixed-language programming feasible. dotNET is the same way. The just-in-time code generating and linking makes it somewhat different, but the end result is essentially the same. You do program in a selection of languges! E.g. you could set up the data structure for a screen layout as compile-time initialized data in a procedural language, but XAML is somewhat better suited for the task. XAML is a language for creating a compile-time initialized data structure, and leaves the playground for procedural code to take over these structures and use them further.
Python just doesn't fit it here. It doesn't want to. Sometimes, you get a feeling that Python hopes to grow so much that it can squeeze out all other alternatives and rule the world; then it has no reason to worry about ABI and CLI and whatever they are called, all the non-Python standards. Python defines its own standards, ignoring everyone else.
ARM ABI and dotNet leaves me with a much better gut feeling. They encourage me to use the language that is best suited for the task. Python does not. It more or less demands that I use Python, whether suitable or not. It takes away my freedom. That is probably on top of the list. The two other points come in second and third.
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Quote: And 70% (or thereabouts) of all Python programs must indicate in the implementation language in the program name. (Even Visual Basic programmers don't feel a need to give their programs names starting with "vb"!)
That's just petty.
Quote: ARM ABI and dotNet leaves me with a much better gut feeling. They encourage me to use the language that is best suited for the task. Python does not. It more or less demands that I use Python, whether suitable or not. It takes away my freedom. That is probably on top of the list. The two other points come in second and third.
Using an ABI would make sense if Python was a low-level system language. It's not, and was probably never intended to be one; the language itself is written in C (See CPython). It's meant to be an abstraction-layer language, and if C can use an ABI, it wouldn't take very much work to abstract it in Python.
I like Python because it's a simple language that allows me to write up a proof of concept with very little impedance between the idea and the application in itself. If I need OOP, I can use it, but I'm not required to. Type checking is an option, and what's more free than being allowed to choose?
Have I made embarrassing messes with Python? More than I'd like to admit, but every time I did, I learned that I wasn't thinking in Python, but thinking in X-Language, and translating it into Python. Since I don't work in Python on a daily basis, thinking in Python (TIP) doesn't come as easily for me as it would otherwise. Nonetheless, when I'm in a TIP-state of mind, the code I produce is leagues ahead of what I produced with the thinking-in-X-then-translation method.
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Good, but don't get lost in it, keep track of time
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I think your message was meant for Brady, not me.
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Yes, pressed the Reply button at the wrong location.
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I have seen and gone through the Python 3.7 tutorial, but I did so very fast and long ago. I plan on doing the "official" tutorial once I finish some of the Python courses. Then I will have a good understanding of the libraries and can use the tutorial topics to write real, practical Python.
"'Do what thou wilt...' is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself."
—Aleister Crowley
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It's quite good language in many ways; once you get past the "indentation" problem. I have used the Python IDE and Visual Studio Code, and both editors handle automatic indentation without problems.
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Nice thanks
I'm not sure how many it cookies it makes to be happy, but so far it's not 27.
JaxCoder.com
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