Open source theorycrafting and coding
Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2015 11:51 am
In my latest theorycrafts, I took the liberty of writing code snippets and sharing them. It was pointed out this was overloading the text sometimes and... I kind of agree. Readability should get priority over the "how". From a user/reader perspective, I understand that point of view.
However, I feel something important is lost if we don't share the maths or code that is used. There is very little discussion on the maths behind warhammer at all. Likewise, there is rarely any code sharing. To me, it seems that the lack of shared knowledge and coding is keeping our community in the dark.
If I look back at my own history, I see I started with binomial coefficients for the first time, back in 2007:
http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=49833
Now, almost 8 years later, I'm surprised by how little our community has evolved since.
Some googling about gave me this post from 2010 which echoes my feelings today:
http://www.3plusplus.net/2010/08/guest- ... community/
Again it marks how little progress the community made in 5 years.
A similar thing seems to occur for coding. With little code being shared, it seems that if Excel doesn't offer it, it can't be computed. I'm willing to bet few people even know how to get the numbers in Excel while this could be an accessible tool for many.
With the common code base being so poor, I'm not surprised to see the app store from iTunes littered with theoryhammer apps, one as terrible as the other, with even less functionality than Excel.
I don't mind people trying their own thing, and exploring the maths on their own. But it amazes me how slow the common knowledge of maths and code progresses. Compared to the math-communities we get in online games, we're barely moving at all.
Anyhow, to me it feels like the theory and computations need to be reinvented time and again, like we're required to solve a Sudoku each time we want to check the simplest of things. It makes me wonder... if we couldn't make our community stronger with a common knowledge base and a bit more open source code?
How do other players feel about that? Do you think our community could gain from a shared knowledge base?
However, I feel something important is lost if we don't share the maths or code that is used. There is very little discussion on the maths behind warhammer at all. Likewise, there is rarely any code sharing. To me, it seems that the lack of shared knowledge and coding is keeping our community in the dark.
If I look back at my own history, I see I started with binomial coefficients for the first time, back in 2007:
http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=49833
Now, almost 8 years later, I'm surprised by how little our community has evolved since.
Some googling about gave me this post from 2010 which echoes my feelings today:
http://www.3plusplus.net/2010/08/guest- ... community/
Again it marks how little progress the community made in 5 years.
A similar thing seems to occur for coding. With little code being shared, it seems that if Excel doesn't offer it, it can't be computed. I'm willing to bet few people even know how to get the numbers in Excel while this could be an accessible tool for many.
With the common code base being so poor, I'm not surprised to see the app store from iTunes littered with theoryhammer apps, one as terrible as the other, with even less functionality than Excel.
I don't mind people trying their own thing, and exploring the maths on their own. But it amazes me how slow the common knowledge of maths and code progresses. Compared to the math-communities we get in online games, we're barely moving at all.
Anyhow, to me it feels like the theory and computations need to be reinvented time and again, like we're required to solve a Sudoku each time we want to check the simplest of things. It makes me wonder... if we couldn't make our community stronger with a common knowledge base and a bit more open source code?
How do other players feel about that? Do you think our community could gain from a shared knowledge base?