[python-uk] 2nd London Python Dojo - 18:30 15 October 2009 at Fry-IT

[Jonathan Hartley]

again!

Jonathan Hartley wrote:
> inline
>
> Jon Ribbens wrote:
>> Also I'd like to put in a strong vote for part of the spec being that
>> the game will allow human v human, human v computer, or computer v
>> computer games (by entering "number of players: zero" ;-) )
>>   
> We talked about this during the dojo planning meetup last week. We all 
> had great interest in this idea and pursued it for some 40 minutes or 
> so. However, we reluctantly decided to scrap it because we couldn't 
> figure out a simple way of enabling it without providing intrusive 
> frameworks of code to channel the direction of the dojo participants.
>
> If you can figure out a way, I'd be open to the discussion, but I'd be 
> wary that we might simply be retreading the discussion that was 
> already had.

Having said that, I realise with a moment's reflection that we were 
somewhat transfixed by the probably misleading initial suggestion 
(mine?) that a single process should play as one player, and that to see 
computer-to-computer matches we should wire up the stdin of one process 
to the stdout of another.

Your framing of the problem as a single process playing against itself 
is doubtless more straightforward and simpler to implement (although it 
lacks the aspect that I found most appealing of allowing matches between 
differing implementations.) However, your version may have the advantage 
of actually being achievable from a blank slate in the very limited time 
available.

However I feel like a dojo is good for practising technique, 
test-driven, design, refactoring, and as we saw last time, having a 
subject matter which puts us under time pressure does somewhat force all 
these things out of the window, since people feel under pressure to make 
progress towards the ambitious goal. So I would vote for having the 
simplest dojo we can possibly persuade ourselves to accept, at least 
until we find out feet.

    Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Hartley      Made of meat.      http://tartley.com
tartley at tartley.com   +44 7737 062 225   twitter/skype: tartley