The Devpit

Another day in hell.
Matthew pushed open the glass door, staring bleary eyed at his phone.
“Sync complete,” said a pleasant female voice.
He stopped in the doorway and took a breath. Sweet, pleasant air lolled around him. The old security guard at reception nodded in greeting
“Matt, how you doing today.”
He waved Matthew through.
Matthew walked. The corridor rose gently underneath him, becoming a glass umbilical that parted the crisp, green lawns surrounding the building proper. His phone rumbled in his pocket, handling all the automated requests and scripted tasks he’d set up. He paused at the door, detecting the faint sounds of music, then swiped himself in.
Rows of racks lay before him, circling a central control station. The hum of a thousand servers lulled him as the gentle strings of Vivaldi excited him.
“Spring, uh in E major?”
“You’re getting sharper, Matt!” An older man emerged from the rows, his pockets stuffed with spare parts.
“Oh hey, morning Steve.”
The technician leaned on one of the earthing rods. A faded nametag hanging onto his turtleneck read CEO
“I was just putting a few optimizations in on Block C. You could give me a hand, or did you want to check status from the panopticon first?”
“You’re rewiring the HPC clusters?” Matthew pulled out his phone and scrolled through a list of success messages
“I figured why not? Your test worked so well, we can get the entire Block converted across today.”
Matthew rubbed his hands together “I can’t wait to start.”

“Matthew?”
Matthew lurched upright, the screen coming into focus in front of him. Where- oh right. Another day in hell.
“What?” he snapped.
Daniel appeared on the edge of vision “Thought you might want lunch.”
“Yes, No. I mean, I’m very busy.”
“I can see that,” Matthew was always impressed by Daniel’s ability to accept lies. It was probably why he did so well here “But I snagged leftovers from a meeting.”
Matthew jumped up “Let’s roll,” he spared a glance over the other desks but Steve and Kobe were gone.

Daniel led the way to the meeting room. He even held the door open for Matthew. There were indeed muffins on the table. However they were not alone. Amelia sat facing the window. A lowly intern, she’d yet to perfect the thousand yard stare. And at the head, Farah, one of the ambitious young project managers.
“After all I’ve done for you. Traitor!” Matthew fled.
Daniel stepped inside with a pained expression “I tried.”
Amelia watched as Matthew flew down the corridor, collided with an analyst and yelled an apology. She turned back to the meeting. Daniel, resigned to the madness, dug into the muffins. Their project manager Farah was preternaturally calm “That went pretty well. You were supposed to give him the requirements deck beforehand though.”
Daniel shrugged “He would have known something was up.”
Farah tapped on a conference phone “M… M… what’s his extension?”
“He’s ex-directory. You know IT. Amelia has his number.”
“That’s for emergencies,” Amelia said protectively.
“Amelia,” Farah leaned forward “Let’s do a little roleplay.”
“Ok?”
“The building is on fire. Can I have the number?”
“I....”
“Remember we’re roleplaying. You, Daniel and I are writhing in agony as fire consumes our flesh.”
“It burns.” said Daniel between muffins.
Reluctantly Amelia produced a dog-eared note.

Farah smiled “The first rule in business is knowing how to deal with people.”
She dialled the number and switched to speaker phone.
Back to the hell that spawned ye!”the voice sounded slightly out of breath.
“Matthew, was it? This is Farah from Projects. I was told you have just the skills we’re looking for.”
“No, I don’t know anything about that and I’m busy with a priority incident!”
“I already cleared the time with your manager. You’ll be released from all ongoing maintenance to work with us.”
“Satan is the father of lies.”
Farah nodded to Daniel. He cleared his mouth of crumbs.
“Hi Matthew.”
“And as for you Judas! I will see you-“
“This is just a scoping exercise, you won’t be required to give concrete estimates.”
There was a long pause at the other end of the phone
“I want that in writing.”
Amelia realised she should probably be taking notes.

With a new project comes a new tweak to the inheritance model I use with Javascript. To be honest this is turning into a modding situation. It always feels like we can inherit better with Javascript, that we can produce fitter objects. Here's the structure.

Conan Exiles is a funny game. From one perspective it's yet another early access sandbox survival game. From another it's ARK: Survival Evolved with the dinosaurs swapped out. It doesn't seem like much of a recommendation, being a reskin of another game. The Hyborian Age mythos seems grafted on. The main menu music is someone doing a downbeat version of Basil Poledouris' Anvil of Crom. The opening cinematic in classic MMO fashion has nothing to do with the game. Yet the game itself is passable enough. However what I want to talk about isn't the game.

Let's talk about the philosophy of Conan: Exiles.