+- The First Age (https://thefirstage.org/forums)
+-- Forum: Central Moscow (https://thefirstage.org/forums/forum-1.html)
+--- Forum: Red-light district (https://thefirstage.org/forums/forum-22.html)
+--- Thread: Coding Fantasy [Kallisti] (/thread-1925.html)
Coding Fantasy [Kallisti] - Marta - 12-03-2025
Marta had been working hard and it was beginning to pay off. Marta wasn’t typically book smart, but when she was excited about something, she worked hard. Marta had poured most of her free time into learning how to code and program. She had done some hacking too, but it had been with Sage’s help, and it had been to get access to his information for her job.
Today she was working on a text-based fantasy game. She knew not many people played those anymore. They were popular around sixty years ago, but she figured it would be a fun way for her to work on her coding skills in a fun way. She liked telling stories, games, and coding, so why not make a “choose your own adventure” game.
Everyone seemed to be focused on their work. He wasn’t there often, but today Sterling’s crush, Liam, was here. He seemed to be inattentive at times as he worked on whatever it was he was doing. Marta sighed as she finished what she was working on. Now she needed to test it. She started up her program and smiled as it came up on her screen. So far so good. She went into the introduction to the game and tried an option. It just repeated the first screen. She tried a different option and found the same thing. Something was off.
She went back into her code and tried to troubleshoot. She thought she found it, but upon testing, she was getting the same thing. She had no idea what was wrong.
”Ugghhhhhh,” she intoned, frustrated and began to lightly bang her head on the table, accentuating every word. ”Why. Won’t. My. Code. Work. What. Am. I. Doing. Wrong?” she gave one one bang on the table and then just lay there, feeling a little discouraged.
RE: Coding Fantasy [Kallisti] - Liam H - 12-03-2025
The Wicked Truth was at the office today. Liam was excited. But unfortunately he'd already made a date to go to Kallisti and work. Rather it's what his schedule told him to do so he couldn't just up and break it because he wanted to be in the office to meet the man himself. And make sure he didn't hack the system.
Liam tried to work but was distracted by his infatuation with a man he knew by name. Knew he had a computer in his head. And he was going to be talking to his dad! It was exciting. But he had school to do and his dad would get mad if he didn't stay on top of his grades now that he'd found a place that worked for him. Nox's little school for misfits was doing great for his grades. And he still got to see Sterling. She was sitting with the girl with golden eyes. He didn't quite understand all the things that went on here, but it didn't matter to him. He just wouldn't tell his dad -- at least not everything.
The golden-eyed girl banged her head on the table in frustration. He was intrigued by her words and got up and stood behind her and glanced at her screen. Sterling looked up at him and he grinned. She was cute, but he had to play it right, her cousin was lenient but he was also a hard man to convince. Liam liked Nox, though he barely knew the guy.
"Watch out for typos." He said from behind her. "After so long they look alike. You shouldn't be coding like Wicked. He doesn't need things like we need and he forgets that sometimes." Or at least that's what Liam had assumed happened. She was typing in the terminal like a pro -- she needed an IDE with all the fun helpful things that every coder with eyeballs uses. Sage Parker -- the Wicked Truth didn't need those things.
Liam pulled a chair over and sat down next to her and reached for the laptop. "May I?" He added. "I'm not fixing anything, just downloading what I use and setting you up to code as a normal person would. Only the really old or really smart or pedantic ones code without the visual tools. Wicked sees things differently than us it's okay for him."
RE: Coding Fantasy [Kallisti] - Marta - 12-03-2025
Marta smelled him before he spoke, so she didn’t react to hearing his voice except to raise her head. She didn’t realize there were tools she could use to code. Sage hadn’t told her, and she had been content to learn it this way. But that probably meant she was farther along than she thought she was.
”I do it this way so I can understand how it works,” she said, her voice calm as she turned to meet his gaze. But maybe she was already understanding how it worked, so using tools would be okay. She was glad he wasn’t going to fix it. He’d rather he show her how to fix it. That way she would understand.
She minimized her screens and pushed the laptop over to him, accepting his help and maybe she was getting this better. Her wallpaper showed one of her cartoons. It was actually the one she had originally drawn for Hayden’s assignment. It showed a four panel story of Nox helping a kitten out of the tree and then getting stuck in the tree himself. She had turned in another one because Nox had lost his power and she wasn’t sure it was appropriate at that time. Since he had gotten better though, she felt more comfortable with sharing it, even if she hadn’t shown anyone yet.
”Okay - go ahead. Show me how to use it too?” she just learned better that way.
RE: Coding Fantasy [Kallisti] - Liam H - 12-03-2025
Liam took the computer at her offering and nodded he'd show her how to use it. It really wasn't something he would need to at least not at first. He downloaded the best free software IDE out there. "This is just an intelligent development editor. It can have AI if you want it to, but you should start with the basics. It can help you debug better."
Liam installed the program and opened up her code in it. The plain boring text that she had was now lit with colors. "The colors help you identify functions, and variables and like spell checking in everything these days, we get errors that are stupid, like missing semicolons, a wrong quote, stupid things we all miss."
Liam scrolled through her code looking for something. "So a typo in a variable name can often be a problem. You use it correctly in one place and in the other it's wrong but you've missed it lots of times. See this greyed out variable here. It means it's not used so if you intended to use if you did use it it's either typed wrong here, or where ever it is you would use it. But the good thing is you'll get another visual cue where it is that it's wrong."
Liam pushed the computer back to her. "It can do a lot more. And I can show you how to do it more, but first try with the visual cues. It's no different than what you were doing, just prettier. We can set up debug environments and tests and automations and all sorts of things later. But that's a whole thing unto itself."