I've been playing with this for 30 minutes, and I'm still smiling my head off. It's just so much fun. I have used Pico-8 a bunch in the past (so it was easy to jump into making stuff). Pico-8 is one of four bits of software that I put it in my basket of "software that sparks joy" along with Aesprite, Blender, and Propellorhead's Rebirth.
Pico-8 had so much care put into its goals and intentional limitations: and so far Picotron seems to have that same level of love and thought. It's delightful, and I don't want to stop making things with it.
I've used many of the clones of pico-8 and they all feel like they miss the point. They "improve" on the limitations, but are just... not satisfying. Funnily enough, I've tried three times to make my own JavaScript version of what Picotron is ("what if I made a more feature-rich version of Pico-8 to use for prototyping in game jams?") and each time abandoned it because it felt like the Pico-8 clones: adequate, functional, but not inspirational.
I don't know who makes Pico-8 and Picotron, but hats off to you amazing person/people for making such likable software!
I too put Aesprite in this category, but the big one for me is Godot. After years of from-scratch OpenGl projects and dabbling with Unity, I leaned into Godot 100% around 2020, and ever since it has been my #1 joy-sparking piece of software.
Around 2016 or so I had concluded that game dev has just stopped being fun, but luckily a friend talked me into trying pico-8. It's hard to describe what this little piece of software did for me, pure white magic!
Just around New Year Godot finally 'clicked' for me and once again I am super excited to tinker and prototype. I'm almost too scared to try out Picotron now. Almost.
Not sure why you'd turn this into a game (it's awesome though!), but for anyone who hasn't seen the movie - I'd recommend it. It really has stuck with me long after I saw it. Starts out with "Father Ted" vibes, but end up going... in other directions.
I can't believe you posted that - just yesterday I was thinking about how dark that song was.
The bit that really stood out was how "anti-Billy" it was: "He says his name is William, but I'm sure it's Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy". Like he was lying about his name/nickname. Then later - even when siding with him - says "They're nothing like Billy and me". He bloody told you his name was William!
The more I thought about the song the more I thought that the lyrics made a really interesting poem.
Woah. I've spent the last year-or-so messing with coding the C64 and hoovering up any information I could find... and I never found this site/ftp. So much good stuff - there goes my evening!
I'd argue that CoffeeScript was dead before Typescript went mainstream, and that JavaScript killed CoffeeScript: or rather, CoffeeScript killed itself.
Many of the features that made CoffeeScript fun and useful were incorporated directly into ES6. The proposals even cited CoffeeScript and borrowed the syntax verbatim or with minor changes. By the time arrow-functions were accepted it was obvious that the cost of transpiling wasn't worth it any more, all that was left was "significant whitespace", which was the most buggy part about CoffeeScript anyway!
The whole purpose of Typescript is to be an early release of the next version of JS, so everything in TS will eventually be in JavaScript.
I think CoffeeScript died because it didn't offer any real improvement, which TS offers even incrementally (in a single function, for example) without going all-in.
I felt the same way last year, and had just moved countries. I decided I wouldn't apply for any jobs that were "normal": the normal work I would do. No IT consultants/agencies, no web-dev companies, no finance, no advertising, no SAAS, and nothing where I'd have to write the same four programs over and over. It took a while, but I ended up getting a job in a completely new domain: but one that still required my core skills.
So I get to learn a lot of new things, while still being a productive team member.
I'm starting to feel that software development should be a means to an ends - not the ends itself, so focusing on the (non-software) domain is the play.
I had the luxury of being able to take my time, but I found a handful of interesting opportunities that matched my requirements. It's much rarer than regular-old IT jobs, but they ARE out there!
Some feedback: "This is the first test on our app", "Option1, Option2, Option3, Option4", random pictures of fingers, "Dddd, "Eeee"... doesn't really give any indication on what this app is about or what it's supposed to be used for.
I spend 10 minutes looking at those screen shots, but have no idea what this app could possibly be about, and I can't see how it relates to the description about politics - it makes no sense!
Pico-8 had so much care put into its goals and intentional limitations: and so far Picotron seems to have that same level of love and thought. It's delightful, and I don't want to stop making things with it.
I've used many of the clones of pico-8 and they all feel like they miss the point. They "improve" on the limitations, but are just... not satisfying. Funnily enough, I've tried three times to make my own JavaScript version of what Picotron is ("what if I made a more feature-rich version of Pico-8 to use for prototyping in game jams?") and each time abandoned it because it felt like the Pico-8 clones: adequate, functional, but not inspirational.
I don't know who makes Pico-8 and Picotron, but hats off to you amazing person/people for making such likable software!