Hesitated for a while before posting this, as I don't like to whine in public but this should be therapeutical

Beware, it's a #longread

Years ago, I thought about how cool it'd be to have conversation-based interactive fiction on my phone. I remember showing early prototypes to my ex in 2012. It took me over 2 years to build up the courage to make it my priority and to take time off. FictionBurgers.com was born.

A few weeks in, a friend of mine forwarded me a link to Lifeline. I was devastated. I literally spent 2 days cursing my past self for not making a move sooner.

I soldiered on, worked 7 months straight on it. Now the tech is 90-95% finished, content is maybe 60% finished and I just... gave up. Every other week now, similar projects are popping up. I'm under-staffed and under-financed compared to them. Beyond the entertainment space, "conversation-based" is hot stuff in 2016, and I still can't seem to know what to do with what I have.

I feel like I had this fantastic opportunity and squandered it, which makes me miserable.

Anyway, just so you get some cheese with my whine, here are a few lessons I learned the hard way:

Lesson #1 : Don't go it alone. I thought I could hack it, and for over 7 months, I did. But sooner or later, shit gets to you, it's just human. That's when you need someone; just so that their highs compensate your lows and vice versa. Most of the actual writing was done by a freelancer (and he did AMAZING WORK, especially considering that I couldn't pay him much) but it's not the same as a partner, who's invested same as you.

Lesson #1.5 : Complementary skills. Just like my fiction project failed because I was missing a writer partner, my fallback plan of getting into conversational tech hit the skids for lack of a bizdev partner. It's great to stick among devs when ranting, but you need to mingle with a variety of people. Some of them are actually ok, y'know :)

Lesson #2 : Lean Startup, MVP. Google those terms if you're not familiar with them. My mistake here (after MVPing the shit out of the tech) was to let my content goal run amok : what made my app superior to the competition (or so I reasoned) was that it would allow for conversations with multiple characters! So I started plotting a story... with 9 characters. Not 2 or 3. NINE FREAKING CHARACTERS! Branching conversations with 9 characters is the stuff of nightmare -- and is the main reason I gave up.

Lesson #3 : Know your reasons. I wasted some much time early on, zig-zaging between objectives:
"I'm just indulging myself"
"No, I really want it to be a project that pays off"
"Nah, it's just a learning opportunity"
"Damn, why is it bothering me so much that someone else is doing the same thing ?"
"Doesn't matter, I just mine finished"
"What a waste of time !!"
etc etc
And it's still a problem now that I'm trying to figure out what to do!

So anyway, that's my story, thanks for readin'
Check out chatty.im/player/sugar-wars if you want to test the most advance version.

Also, I've also tagged this #startupfail, if any of you fine people want to share the lessons you've dearly paid to learn!

Seeing on some other posts I wanted to rant about my uni’s computer science community.

Some background: This is a small uni, not like a community college definitely a little bigger. Located somewhere in WV. There is 2-4 girls in every CS class I have had and at least 27-30 guys.

The reason why I mention this is because there is no sense of team work at all. When it comes to exams or projects I take the initiative and make either quizlets (being freaking nice here) share them or take times after school in the library to work on projects. If I have a solution I will share it, I will try to help you in your problem. If I know how to do it of course.

The real issue is all those CS experts that already fixed or finished their programs, the ones on the top of the class. Is as if the moment I ask something related to the project I am already dumb for not have figured it out on my own.

There is the typical CS student that just tries and gives up or just gives up without trying and the other kind of CS student that does that. Doesn’t help anybody else, wants to be on the top all the time.

What I am trying to say here is that it just feels like a competition all the time. (I consider myself in between this two types of students cause I wasn’t born a genius but I do try my ass off on projects) however, I feel like guys see me every new semester in a CS class and think “oh wow how is she still here? Wait did she pass?”

All I say is “yeah I fucking did, with a C or B but here”. So I don’t know, first rant posted 👏🏽🙆🏽‍♀️

I fucking hate this country. I hate this place. I hate these people.

I have to wait for seconds for chrome to even show up, I can't browse shit. VS Code fucks it up like I'm tryna solve some quantum formulas but in reality IT JUST HAVE TO OPEN A FUCKIN PROJECT FOLDER.

I hate the fact that I need to work for months to afford a decent computer, MBP or XPS isn't even a dream for me.

Wanna buy a XPS? Good. Now work for 10 months even without spending a dime. MBP? It just become 20.

Why did I have to be born in this fucking shithole part of the world? I could've just born dead, that would be less painful.

I wrote my first line of code at 12. I fell in love with it and continued. I'm 25 now and I'm a software engineer. I don't even have time or energy to work on personal projects anymore. Writing code isn't a hobby anymore. It's a means to survive. Why/how did this happen? When will building things be fun again? Before landing my first job as an engineer, not once did I consider salaries, equity, atmosphere, nor any of the other amenities (or lack thereof) of code as a profession. But, I don't even know when any of that fell into the picture and they've managed to suck the novelty out of a really cool pastime. I'm essentially a well-paid robot. Who did this? What's happening? What can I do to find the freedom I once had? When did I become just another cog in a machine? Should I try my hand in business, bent on making a lot of money so I can retire early and have time to experiment again? Is that unrealistic? Should I buy lottery tickets every paycheck? We only get one life and I realized this. I'm panicking because I know I'm not enjoying myself and that I'm not on track to leave the world better than it was when I was born into it. So much loss. I'm grateful, but this is not cool at all. I want my hobby back.

How does it feel attending conferences? (Good ones!)

Here in my country we don't have that many good ones they are all just some show offs talking about how they hacked their way through. But when I see videos for big conferences with thousands of people it makes me feel a bit jealous and sad that I can't attend those where you'll get real achievers (~_~)

Why did I have to be born here like this FUCK 3rd world countries.

This is something that I hadn't done or that directly impacted me, but that had an effect in my life several years after it happened.
It's one of those stories that you think "this only happens to others", and then someday you're the "others".

So when I was born, I was, naturally, registered on the health care system. My parents chose an uncommon name for me (uncommon in my country) so I think I wasn't registered by the time of my birth, but 4 months later when all the bureaucratic crap came to an end (long story short, the guy that was there when it started died and my parents had to wait 4 months for another person to be appointed). So, when my parents finally went to register me, apparently, for some reason, the computer took my name and assumed it was a male name. As I've said, my name is uncommon in my country, there're probably 3 or 4 people with the same name here in Portugal.
Why did the computer assume it was a male name AND why didn't nobody check that? Since my parents had to ask to government entities to let them name me that name, I'm assuming it wasn't in their db. So why did it assume male? Was it purposely programmed that, by default, all "newly-registered" names were to be male? Was it random? Who the hell knows.
And how did nobody check that, every time I went to take vaccines? I don't think anyone told my mom that everytime we went there that the data was wrong, otherwise the situation wouldn't have lasted for 14 years.
We only knew about that mishap when it was time I had to take vaccines specifically for women and that I wasn't being noticed of it even though a friend 1y younger than me had already taken hers.

I find this story amusing but now that I started thinking about how it came to life (no pun intended) I'm actually a bit pissed off about how they didn't think of uncommon names and that how that could affect their registry in the system. They could have - IDK - placed "undefined" in that field so that it would caught the register's attention.
Moral of the story: don't assume stuff :v

WHYY , are you fucking fucking complaining, mother fuckdr yyuo fucking won

You completed our mission objective successfully

You fucking did it mother fhcker and what ur asking from me after all of thus shit weve been through for the past 7 months is beyond our primary mission objective ,fucker

Obviously as you can fuckin see from the 7 months of suffering we can not repeat the same objective twice, just like u cant be born or die twice, fucker

Shit happens once and thats goddamn fuckin it motherfucker move on to tje ffckin next mission objective that i command u to go towards

NO FAILED MISSIONS. I ONLY BROADCAST SUCCESS. BUT SHIT HAPPENS RARE.

So forget about her u motherfucker, you told me what you wanted to achieve, i planned out the whole scenario, i organized the mission objective for you and you have took the fuckin risk and and action and guess what u fuckin succeeded. My mission objective has never failed you. What you are trying for these fuckin past 7 months is not my mission objective and it is out of scope, unplanned fuckin shit and that is why u fell back into fuckin depression i told u to fuckin stay away but u aint to me listen fucker

Stop.

Breathe.

Worry no more about the shit that is irrelevant and out of your fuckin control.

U got friends at college. Hang out with them ull feel better. Whwnever u think of that fuckin whore goo mothrrfuckr and meet ur goddamn fckin irl friends. Text them. Shit man.....

Good luck

!tech
i am a fan of everything mcu but recent ms marvel feels so cringy and awkward as an Indian. the main actress is okay, but almost all of the casting is from non Indian/pakistani descent. thankfully those guys don't try to speak hindi/urdu otherwise i would have snorted while watching 😂. the blend of languages feels so weird i neither like their hindi nor English.

imo squid game like adaptation would have been better , having everyone from same descent and speaking the same language while having everything dubbed by professionals for other languages.

and what's with the colors? mann that's too much color for even the most colourful countries of the world.
and songs? wow. when i was growing up, the movies at that time had dialogues like "when you are in love , you hear background music" , but even those movies didn't had any background music so cringy as this.

also from what i know pakistani culture is way more punjabi than indian culture in general. but here , pwople are speaking perfect hindi even in a mosque!

makes me wonder how the world sees these 2 countries. every 5 minutes i felt that this is more Indian adaptation of a story than pakistan. they just blended the countries' culture brutally. i bet the conversation between director and scriptwriter must be like:

d :hi there
s : hello
d: so you have a movie for me
s : yes sir i do . it's called miss marvel
d : oh so it's about carol denvers? i thought that wasn't until 2024
s : no sir it's about a Pakistani girl with superpowers
d : oh okay. wait did you say Pakistani?
s : yes sir. a pakistani girl born in n-
d : yeh yeh yeh. listen we need to add lots of colors
s : why-?? ok sure sir.
d : and elephants. and borses. also , everyone must occasionally.
s : bur sie those are all the cuisines of an indian wedding . and why we want horses?
d: doesn't matter, i want horses.
s: buf s-? ok fine