I agree with the resolution, and I (almost) never use the built-in code editor.

Most of the time I have a folder per game, with a somegame.p8 whose only code is #include main.p8.lua (+ other includes if needed), and the code itself is inside main.p8.lua. Since the code is cleanly separated from the other assets, I don’t risk overwriting one with the other while juggling between my IDE and pico8

Actually I prefer to develop in TIC-80, but the community is way smaller, and TIC-80 games can’t be played on phones without a keyboard. It’s not a 1:1 alternative, tho I’m glad it exists.

I can recommend PICO-8, if you have access to any windows/osx/linux computer.

It’s a “fantasy console”, a self contained gamedev environment that emulates an 8bit retro console (while using Lua, a popular and modern language), is super user friendly, and allows you to get a satisfying and fast feedback loop when learning to code.

There are many resources to learn it and a lively community

• https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
• https://www.reddit.com/r/pico8
• https://m.youtube.com/@LazyDevs/playlists
• http://discord.gg/EwQ86eq

The hardest languages to learn are the ones that have a different paradigm than the ones you’re used to.

Most modern languages today somehow derive from C, in a way or another. JavaScript, Go, PHP, Java, C#, even Python… If you’re used to one of these languages, you should be able to get a high level understanding of code written in other languages. Some like Rust can be a bit harder when diving into idiosyncrasies (e.g. borrow checker and lifetimes), but it’s not too hard.

But if I encounter a Lisp, or a more domain-specific language like Julia or Matlab, I need to put in a lot more effort to understand what I’m trying to read. Though Lisps are inherently simple languages, the lack of familiarity with the syntax throws me off.

Mathematicians and scientists are notoriously awful programmers. They get shit done but with absolutely 0 regard to good practices and reusability.

idiot-proofing

Don’t chalk it up to idiots. The quote mentions “MFA fatigue”, which is something that definitely happens.

If you’re a Windows user (and moreso if you play games on your computer), you certainly regularly have admin prompts. I’m pretty sure that, like everyone else, you just click OK without a second thought. That’s fatigue. Those prompts exist for a security reason, yet there are so many of them that they don’t register anymore and have lost all their meaning.

For my job, I often have to login into MS Azure, and there are days where I have to enter my MFA 3 or 4 times in a row. I expect it, so I don’t really look at the prompt anymore. I just enter the token to be done with it asap; that’s a security risk