The Great Namaste Bug
Channel: Shubhojoy Mitra
Date: 2023-02-27

This programming life... can't say there is no fun in it. The more a system becomes complex, the more kicks you can get out of it. Talk about a nerdy way to have fun! What are you waiting for? So you don't like debugging... delousing,...but that's one of primary social bonding rituals, didn't you know, across many species of primates! I know I am going off on a tangent, but here’s the thing, at one level we are still monkeys with typewriters producing a healthy volume of gibberish every now and then, and often so much it, that we end up being quite unintelligible to each other although we still presumably speak the same languages.

And yes, that's what it is all about actually: the use and abuse of language. Computers may be really efficient for calculations and simulations, but it's with a language, similar enough to be thought of as rudimentary techno-linguistic system with a semantic framework that enables the creation of a virtual environment, enough to dream your dreams in it, and even live some of those dreams, and sometimes regress into a nightmarishly absurd Kafka-esque drudgery of routine, or sometimes find fresh fields to feast one's fecund imagination. It is not just all in the mind, but as a very real projection, and quite delightful at that in how simple things become more and more layered and nuanced, until you suddenly discover wondrous and joyful things in your playground (which is a microcosm where the nerds are the stars of the big league). Even a bug is a wondrous and joyful find, and I sure, I could be Finknottle making an impassioned plea for the noble and worthy cause of preservation of newts and their habitat.

The long and short of this rambling rant is this: if you want to be a programmer, you must enjoy everything about it. And mostly, the bugs, those logical bugs.Only then you know you are making some progress. It has been just three odd years since I wrote a dream of mine without ever really dreaming that I would (be able to) do so, or was even capable of such a feat. I mean game programming: which starry-eyed young nerd does not dream of becoming one? But it's not what I was really after. There are games, and there are games.However I enjoy building systems and frameworks more than actually just being able to use software and programming to make "a creation", a novelty, a great gameplay that becomes a sport and a culture. I think in terms of making tools which in turn makes other tools.

S1mJS was born in a programming frenzy that lasted for a couple of weeks or less, probably a week towards getting ready for the moment to start the bricklaying and foundation. You could say I was fooling around with my tooling for a while until one day, one moment I was already at it even as I got down to the job of erecting the solid steel frame that will support a lightweight, elegant and minimalistic arena with retractable moorings good enough for hosting a simple tic-tac-toe redux or a complicated, episodic, non-linear and evolving or iterative contest. 

Still with me so far? Okay, let me try to make it more relatable by telling you the story (if you can call it a story): perhaps “an experience” is more appropriate. And no, the "programming frenzy" had no visible outward manifestation. It was the first Corona-winter, the winter of 2020 and we were soon about to end many months of the working from home routine, each individual a prisoner in their own house and no one to blame for it. In fact, I don't even remember how I wrote it, the actual time spent, or what it felt like: the core of it was surely done in one or two days. It felt like one long moment of clarity that stretched and filled up the downtime people take in the midst of more pressing engagements and chores at office or at home. It felt so normal, almost as normal as finding some “cosy, private time” to relax with a favourite activity, like a hobby-horse, or simply solving sudoku. I was terribly occupied during that period, facing a professionally catastrophic situation in the offing.

My work schedule was not just a busy one, it was a balancing act between the dirt one has to get used to when dealing with  cynically perverse bullies in the guise of a wanna-be corporate bosses and other riff-raff on one hand, and normal, quietly resentful, trying-to-live-their lives or making-something-out-of-their-humbler-circumstances kind of people on the other, the kind who at worst have very little illusion left.

But all this time, in the tiny glass cubicle I now found myself in, I enjoyed my time in-between during the breaks, and later each evening, doing what I like to do to relax: play with language. A whole new framework again, and I wrote it from scratch... the real deal. A tool to make tools with, good for games and simulations, and probably much more. Properly speaking it is still what I would conservatively call at the alpha stage, or maybe even beta... but boy, is it something? Even the bugs don't bug me at all!