Cheese Wheel Coding
For anyone who can't code expertly, but who found themselves attempting to create a MUSH, the following story will make you laugh. For the coders who see themselves in this, you should laugh, too, even if you go "Hey!"
One night, I was angry at one of our coders who was notorious for never coding anything we needed but is always mucking about. I was coding something (or attempting to), and the head coder wasn't on. A non-coding staffer was on with me, and I began grousing and cursing. He asks what I intend to do about +media code. I tell him, (in the fashion that one can tell their good friends) "I have no [censored] clue and if no one gets their butt onto coding one, I'll do it as a bboard." So, he senses I'm a bit annoyed and I tell him about the coder and the ever-changing Parent Room, and how when I ask for something, I get something else. He tells me that coding works like this:
Head WIZ: "I need a subway code in 3 weeks."
Coder: "Okay"
1 week later:
Head WIZ: Did you do the subway code?
Coder: Working on it. But I did get the parent rooms to output to all green if everyone in the room is female.
2 weeks later:
Head WIZ: How's the subways coming?
Coder: I didn't do those, but I will. I fancied up the +dsay, though.
3 weeks later:
Head WIZ: How's progress in code?
Coder: Great! I made a cheese-wheel factory that creates real cheese-wheel objects that you can eat.
Head WIZ: WHERE'S MY [censored] SUBWAY!?
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Counter-point
While I've had my fair share of this myself, when I first started learning how to code back in '99, I was writing the chargen system for a now-defunct mush. If I ran into this situation *today*, it'd be easier, but back then I didn't 100% know what I was doing. It went a little something like this.
Theme Staffer: Okay, the chargen system will need 6 attributes, templates and if a player doesn't have a skill, it doesn't count.
Me: Uh, okay. I'll see what I can do.
One week later:
Me: Hey, I think I've got most of it working.
Theme Staffer: Nevermind, I checked on things. You need 7 attributes, players can check whatever skills they have, and don't make templates select the skills.
Me: Hrm.. okay.
Two weeks later:
Me: Ok, good news about chargen. It's ready.
Theme Staffer: Sorry, but I was looking at the wrong sourcebook. Go back to 6 attributes, have templates, and skills should lose a few points if they haven't trained them. Oh, and make the templates not select the skills, but list them as zero, but don't keep zero skills if someone lowers their skills.
Me: Grrrr.
Three weeks later:
Me: I bought the sourcebook myself, and coded it differently to how you said -- ie, how it's meant to be.
Theme Staffer: Oh, good. I was going to tell you to change it to that, anyway.
Mind you, I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you're one of the co-creators of the game ;)