Nobody Reads Codes? · 8:14pm Mar 14th, 2023
Good morning, day or evening to anyone stumbling over this blog post!
So, yeah, I recently published a fic, where certain chapters are purely code (no worries, it's also commented).
First of all, huge thanks to my pre- and especially the proofreader for going through the code and actually catching mistakes I made. Even on my own I had caught several mistakes, logic that don't work, missing syntax etc etc, so one can only appreciate how someone read anothers code to improve it (considering how the writer is basically just barely a programmer and still learning all the nuances and tricks etc). 
For comparison: even coming up with the numbers in the reports, coming up with power level rules, rewriting them because first ideas were too much to take in etc etc was still easier for me. 
But since I ramble about it: The rules were way more complicated, at the end, I went for easy rules, easy causes, and I think it had turned out better than coming up with some vicious circles or how much the geode's power increases at each hour when this or that or… (trust me, there were way too many factors that were cut out later on).
Nonetheless, I wanted to thank with this blog post anyone who liked, fav'ed and commented on this story! I really appreciate anyone willing to go through the abstract story telling which was more of an experimentation than something I expected to actually work out. At the time of writing this blog, this story is still in featured, so thanks for all the support! 
And also, check out FoME's own story part in the comments of the fic 
I'm still not sure if the missing unit bothering someone so much is now good or bad
But let's continue:
To give a little background, this concept with that plot was more or less the first idea I had when I wanted to make a fic that has real code in it. Then I experimented a bit with other concepts, where you could've actually compile the code and then see in real time how the program spits out a story—but this was quickly scratched.
While I had in mind to only have code, I had to include later on "reports" that Twilight wrote—because seriously, that much code chapters was already enough, and the story had to be somehow explained and told.
Did I cheat a bit? Yes. I have several functions used in there that per se would have needed to be written out, as they don't exist, but as this was a story, not a compilable code, I just made it look like they were defined in another file. After all, the code's intend are to be read, not actually working—and reading code is already hard enough, not even speaking about writing a code that is readable, especially for those who have absolutely no idea of coding (if they even read it in the first place)
I also want to thank Knighty for giving the option to easily format the code with
[codeblock=language] code [ /codeblock](Remove the space between [ and / for working format)
Otherwise, it would have been a time consuming nightmare to format each line on it's own
But nonetheless, again huge thanks for all the help and the support this fic got! I really appreciate it
I still want to applaud you one the level of effort you put in to write all the code, any praise is easily well deserved!