FluffyGhost - Coder Application

[Fluffy]

Ckey/BYOND Username: fluffyghost
Position Being Applied For: coder
Past Experiences/Knowledge:

I studied computer science since high school and have (and am) worked/working in IT since the last year of middle school, where I started in an IT shop (of a dad's friend) repairing and assembling computers, over the years I have covered a good amount of subfields including systems , networks, unified communications, security, virtualization and wireless (also as a consultant up to ~3 years ago), I currently work in an oncall/emergency fashion for other engineers in the USA timezone (I am in Europe), I have between a good and a very high grasp of many of the technologies in use (and some archaic ones aswell) in the aforementioned fields. Thankfully, Arrow handles this for us so none of that is or (hopefully) will ever be relevant for this position.

I have worked as a backend developer, developing custom website backends in PHP+SQL.

I have studied and developed in C (loved it), Java and JavaScript (and hated every moment of it), HTML and CSS (same, and yes, they aren't programming languages).

I have developed a custom Discord bot in Python, as well as various helper tools used across many projects.

I have developed mods and missions/gamemodes using SQF, an inhouse-built programming language in use in the ArmA series (by Bohemia Interactive).

I have also used some other various scripting/programming languages that's probably not even worth mentioning, but feel free to ask, I can list some.

I have managed various websites, forums and game servers for different communities of ArmA, Falcon BMS, Insurgency and Red Orchestra, though ArmA is by far the biggest one I have managed;

When Arma 3 was released in alpha, we moved over from ArmA 2 (and DLCs), and the gamemode that picked up most of the popularity at the time was Altis Life which we forked and started to work on, at the time we had a TeamSpeak, a forum and the game server, running up to 120 players almost daily, I was the lead developer of the community and the administrator/host of the server, a monster (by the time) ~20 cores 96GB RAM (if memory serves me well) dedicated server with a 1GB symmetric connection and a full flash storage... Yes, fun times, but I don't want to go down the memory lane, though if you have questions, feel free to ask, as usual.

Examples of Past Work:
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15519
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15554
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15616
https://github.com/Aurorastation/rust-g/pull/11
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15666
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/16051
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15952
https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/16065

 

Additional Comments:

I am very much an experimentalist, I like to experiment with new features and changes, as I am of the idea that you can never really gauge how things are going to morph the experience until they are actually there and are used, I also like to make/fix/improve tools that others will use to make other things, as I believe a solid foundation is paramount, and I also like to try to squeeze every performance possible out of things.

That also means that my PRs tends to be large projects, and their count lower; the last project PR I could and have atomized ended up creating around 30-ish bugfixing PRs just from it.

I have also done some minor mappings, though it's not my strong suit and I still get merge conflict PTSDs flashbacks from those.

This means that my additions are at times breaking something, rejected by the mantainers or are polarizing in reception. I see it as a necessary endeavor to push forward the game loop and avoid mechanical stagnation, and I consider the mechanical aspects of the game a necessary point to ensure the day to day enjoyment of the experience and the necessary means to push the narrative/story forward, as things are much more engaging when mechanically represented, and the more mechanical options are available the better the variations and decisions can evolve the narrative.

I like to joke around any time I can, code-wise it's especially necessary to avoid burnouts, and as many developers (and IT people in general) would agree, programming is fueled by nihilism, caffeine and swearing. 😆

[KingOfThePing]

I have not commented on this thread until now because I thought that maybe I am neither qualified enough nor does it matter what I have to say since I am only a small contributor but I have changed my mind on this.

tl;dr I would not want to see you on the dev team and have any say in the direction Aurora goes, especially from a design decision aspect because while you are clearly technical versed (as can be seen in the PRs) it is absolutely terrible and pointless to discuss anything with you that is not 100% congruent with your own views and opinions.

 

The long version is that it seems that you (and another person) have made it their personal project to port as much shit from /tg/ and Bay to Aurora (hence, partially where the haha rebase to bay memes come from lately) no matter if it's beneficial to the server. Most of the time it's something like "it's better, bro", no matter if it fits our setting, our playstyle or if it is actually better and needed as an addition. Obviously you have added technial things that are beneficial to the server and server performance but I am not talking about these.
And even if I would ignore this all, it is not my main problem. A developer has to be open to feedback and criticism and that is something you absolutely, 100%, without a doubt are unable to. It is literally pointless to get into a discussion with you about anything because you are unable to participate in a discussion on a meaningful level. This is not an attack against you this is what I (and many others) have noticed since you joined the server. The Ion Law Thread is the most recent evidence of this, which also happened on the forums so it can be seen better than on Discord. You do not engage in discussions, you just argue without substance as long as you need until the other parties just give up, mostly because you do not deviate from your point of view, not even an inch and just continue to repeat your already stated opinion, with different words. You dont even care who it is, or if someone says "you have to change X, it will not be merged like this" from admin(s). You still argue against this without any actual arguments.Again, the Ion law thread is the perfect (because on the forums and recently/ongoing discussion) example. Another example is when you only just joined the server, where I still vividly remember how multiple people  had to explain to you why it is not a cool and good thing to add giant "Z" decals to the floors of the ship. Even without the political implications this was just not a well received idea, yet the discussion dragged on for hours, if not days if I recall it correctly. There are many other examples, which can be extracted from the code dungeon, for example. I was just giving the first and last example to show that this has been an ongoing thing and not a one-off occurance.

[Fluffy]

16 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

A developer has to be open to feedback and criticism and that is something you absolutely, 100%, without a doubt are unable to. It is literally pointless to get into a discussion with you about anything because you are unable to participate in a discussion on a meaningful level.

You seem to confuse what discussion means. What you seem to be indicating is "you should just accept what is said", which is not what a discussion is.

18 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You do not engage in discussions, you just argue without substance as long as you need until the other parties just give up, mostly because you do not deviate from your point of view, not even an inch and just continue to repeat your already stated opinion, with different words.

If what I am saying is not addressed, I will reword and restate it; I have no option but to state what I think in a discussion and, unless you believe in doxastic voluntarism, I (nor anyone else) can choose what to believe either, if the arguments brought are unconvincing (or as you call it, without substance, which is an ironic "tu quoque") to make me change view on a topic, I (nor anyone else) will have no choice but have that view on the topic until compelling arguments to change it are brought.

26 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You dont even care who it is, or if someone says "you have to change X, it will not be merged like this" from admin(s). You still argue against this without any actual arguments.

I have made a policy and suggestion thread stemming from this exact thing, what are you even on about?

31 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

Another example is when you only just joined the server, where I still vividly remember how multiple people  had to explain to you why it is not a cool and good thing to add giant "Z" decals to the floors of the ship. Even without the political implications this was just not a well received idea, yet the discussion dragged on for hours, if not days if I recall it correctly.

I can't help but find the irony of citing an example in which I have changed my mind about something after it was discussed. It seems like your whole point is that it was not immediately accepted, which I would be worried about if someone were to, assuming it's not about a glaring logical mistake, immediately change their opinion on something that isn't small. It would mean they form non-minor opinions with not much thinking behind it, and likewise quickly change them too, as they are built on shaky ground.

47 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

There are many other examples, which can be extracted from the code dungeon, for example. I was just giving the first and last example to show that this has been an ongoing thing and not a one-off occurance.

There are also many in which I did change my mind: IPCs needing more involved repairs, expanding the medical system to use defibrillators, power generator to use on an offsite map, armored personnel vehicles, adding to the vault a stealable gatling machinegun, porting GLOB, automatic conversion of the borgs to combat borgs on red alert, point by point general quarters SOP, and the list can go on for a while.

Bringing up an example of me not changing my mind that isn't even 24 hours old, and completely ignoring the many examples in which I changed it, even on the spot, is kind of icky.

[KingOfThePing]

I will not waste my lifetime by logscraping months of discord discussions - I got better things to do, to be honest here. Everyone can read them up, if they wish to do so, they are on the discord for everyone to look up.

I will also not start one of these "discussions" with you here. I have said my piece and you should accept it. Dissect it all you want, that will not change my opinion (quite the opposite, really since you do what I criticized). All I add is, that seeing how you argue "but I did change my mind!" without even acknowledging that it was because you were outright told it will not be merged like this is absolutely meaningless, because it is a forced "change of mind" upon you (since you dont seem to understand any argument) and not reached through discourses. You can feel that bringing up an example that is 24 hours old can be "icky", I find it very telling, since it was not 24 hours of you posting the feedback thread and then not engaging with the discussion but already "arguing" it almost to death within 24 hours. 

 

I have said all I felt needed to be said here.

[Fluffy]

18 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

All I add is, that seeing how you argue "but I did change my mind!" without even acknowledging that it was because you were outright told it will not be merged like this is absolutely meaningless, because it is a forced "change of mind" upon you (since you dont seem to understand any argument) and not reached through discourses.

I will link the message for you: https://discord.com/channels/157516682288562176/302201161044328450/1039606782122799114

I was not told anywhere that it would not be merged otherwise, it was not even a PR yet. You are either going by some very faulty memory recalling, or being purposefully dishonest in narrating the events.

20 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

(since you dont seem to understand any argument)

You can feel however you want, but insulting people (which you have now done twice in a row) is against the rules.

22 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You can feel that bringing up an example that is 24 hours old can be "icky", I find it very telling, since it was not 24 hours of you posting the feedback thread and then not engaging with the discussion but already "arguing" it almost to death within 24 hours. 

Apart from the irony of this, "NOOOOOOO it is not a discussion it's arguing!!1!", in this very "quite telling" example you would notice that some feedbacks are without any addressing from my end, along those that I have addressed. Those are feedbacks that I have accepted to change/implement/whatever you want to call it. Your own example shows you wrong.

I will close with a quote that I find quite telling:

28 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

I will also not start one of these "discussions" with you here. I have said my piece and you should accept it.

[Boggle08]

Competent and motivated are two extremely powerful things for a project like Aurora. I've seen both from you, even outside of this application, and that makes you very attractive as a candidate.

Your ability to work with others is what concerns me:

On 02/04/2023 at 06:11, Fluffy said:

This means that my additions are at times breaking something, rejected by the mantainers or are polarizing in reception. I see it as a necessary endeavor to push forward the game loop and avoid mechanical stagnation, and I consider the mechanical aspects of the game a necessary point to ensure the day to day enjoyment of the experience and the necessary means to push the narrative/story forward, as things are much more engaging when mechanically represented, and the more mechanical options are available the better the variations and decisions can evolve the narrative.

Even at the staff/developmental level, there are a lot of checks on how you can contribute. Both top down, bottom up, and sometimes even horizontally. Plenty of proposed projects have died in community feedback threads. Even in lore, our proposals will frequently get rejected internally; It's important to maintain a level of personal distance with your projects and move on or compromise when your ideas don't work out. How well you work with others is a big weigh on the decision, and your co-workers will not appreciate a long drawn out rhetorical slugging match over every feature you wish to propose/contest. No matter how well you defend your position compared to them.

No matter what design paradigm you're using, you're gonna have to work with others, and be told no a lot. How do you plan to navigate that environment?

[Fluffy]

20 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

How do you plan to navigate that environment?

Sure! Can you clarify what do you mean by navigate the environment? I am not sure to understand the question fully and would hate to answer the question with a not-on-point reply that does not cover what you want to know

[WickedCybs]

You don't seem to be able to work with others well, take feedback well and you don't handle disagreements/hard NO's gracefully. It's been especially apparent when you're talking to other people currently on the development team (those you will be working with more) or administration.

I would not want you on the team for those reasons.

[Peppermint]

Seconding Cybs. Show a really bad ability to take on criticism or talk to others politely when they disagree with your ideas and whatnot. You seem talented when it comes to the coding side and improving regularly (at least from what I read), but I think you really need to get on top of the attitude side before joining the dev team properly. 

[GeneralCamo]

Opposed. You drag arguments long after community consensus is quite clear on it, and instead of actually addressing feedback, you try and redefine community consensus and server policy. Your command of the english language is lacklustre as well, and while this normally would not be an issue, with all of the above points made put together it exacerbates the issues. 

[Fluffy]

One would think that trying to discuss the merits and demerits of each point, scrutinize each argument from multiple angles and trying to reason to try to get as close as possible to an objectively good outcome would be considered a positive thing.

One would also think that it should be pretty obvious that it is impossible to ascertain consensus based on a limited poll size, even more when that poll size is under a selection bias (sorry to break it for you, most players don't care about looking in our discord chat, or visiting the forum, apart from when they're essentially forced to, eg. for whitelists or ban appeals).

I am more than willing to work with data, otherwise, opinions that do not reach a statistically significant size (we have around 200+ active monthly players, to my knowledge, and 5000+ forum users) are taken for what they are: opinions that either have some logical merit behind, which should be discussed to bring out on which premises they rest and if the opinion stands on some merit that can be ascertained, or the opinion is just that, an opinion, that is like saying "strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate ice cream", and is only valuable if there is the data to ascertain that a significant amount of support  is present. Opinion's value rests only in the number of people that share it. No matter how fond you are of your opinion, if you can't neither logically nor statistically substantiate it, it holds no intrinsic value for a discussion. This is even worse when they make use of ill defined terms up to interpretation that makes them seem more like attempts at humor (eg. "LRP", "LARP"), which we are filled to the brim with. It is literally impossible to address such feedbacks, what do you expect someone to do, say that what you're telling about your feelings on some matter aren't really how you feel about it? If a feedback is only reciting how someone feels towards something, just restating that you feel differently is considered impolite (as well as it not being an addressing, nor should be), and trying to draw something that isn't subjective to work with is considered not taking the feedback well, that essentially means you are expected not to discuss at all.

Following, a list of examples in which I have changed my mind through feedback and discourse, that I remember, and in no particular order: 

Spoiler

IPCs needing more involved repairs, expanding the medical system to use defibrillators, power generator to use on an offsite map, armored personnel vehicles, adding to the vault a stealable gatling machinegun, porting GLOB, automatic conversion of the borgs to combat borgs on red alert, point by point general quarters SOP, the intrepid helm remapping (that was changed over multiple times just over feedbacks), the needs for BCs to open the Intrepid hangar walls and vent it before it can take off, having the engines already active at roundstart, each-round RD upgrading items all across the ship, widespread RCDs for all the engineers, persistent map saving across rounds, APC malfunction with the AI need to do a minigame to restore it, more involved anesthesia for surgeries, medbay keeping the 6 doctors, strobe lights while landing for the Intrepid, going into uncharted space with the horizon, re-adding the tazer guns for sec, an offship site with xenomorphs, brain surgery only working below a certain level of BA, blackhole power engine, emergency panic buttons in rooms and halls, consulars having a bodyguard... do I really need to keep going?

I believe you are simply not used to having any actual debate besides those that aren't more than 10 minutes long, after which one of either side just go "whatever, it's not worth my time and effort" and just gives up.

If all of the above is the environment you want to have, that's your prerogative, and you can consider this application withdrawn, as I have no interest in committing my time and effort under such environmental conditions. If, on the other hand, you value trying to be as close as possible to take decisions that are demonstrably good, or at least logically defensible, and in purview of that you want to change my mind on which option best accomplish it, all you need is to bring forth either logically and epistemiologically sound arguments or statistically significant data; I am more than happy to admit to be wrong or that my opinion (preference) just isn't shared by the community. I am more than willing to do, and have in plentiful occasions done, either.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Fluffy

[Omicega]

The way you defend your points and talk to other people practically drips with condescension. I think you should look into reviewing your overly verbose writing style and inherent passive-aggression first, then focus on trying to engage with people in a way that isn't immediately and obviously dismissive -- then think about trying to apply for a dev position again. I don't deny that you're good at coding and have more than adequate credentials for the job, but every post you make here, in other threads, or on Discord only serves to reinforce your display of that same attitude problem people keep telling you about.

[LordPwner]

I feel like everyone's given my two cents, to be honest. But, I want to point some things out that were missed. 

You are argumentative, and seem very unwilling to relent on any points. The 'G1/G2 banned from security' thread comes to mind. You play one, I'm fairly sure CL-04401 due to the app, which you've played them enjoyably from what I've observed from you. Ignoring the rudeness/mini-modding you went in a really STRANGE way to prove your point. You took an admin turret that normally is not in the standard cycle of gameplay to say 'Hey, look- not broken.' On top of that- you tested pulse lasers. Not the ACTUAL equipment/projectiles Security/Raiders/Mercs/Tators/Lings/Vamp's/Etc. Etc. Could actually have access too. 

It really felt like you just had to be right.

It also comes off you have to have things a certain way. My 'But also this isn't a Military ship (As much as you have actively tried to make it one.)' comes from your attempts in the code channel and your active decisions on some items- like the scanner calling everything a 'Bogey': 'air force slang an unidentified or hostile aircraft.' It does this for planets, spacestations, etc. Which is odd and immersion breaking, since it is a civilian ship, most of the things we canonly encounter are non-hostile, and they're not all space craft. A good number are planets, stations, satellites, or even friendly craft like the Spark/Intrepid, and/or whatever faction ships have good relations w/ the SCC. 

I mentioned this to you and got a 'Pttf it's not changing' response. You didn't even take a second to consider that maybe there was something better that could be put in there. It's a bit nitpicky, but I don't think just rehashing everything the others said would be very helpful at all. -1 from me.

[Fluffy]

36 minutes ago, LordPwner said:

Ignoring the rudeness/mini-modding you went in a really STRANGE way to prove your point. You took an admin turret that normally is not in the standard cycle of gameplay to say 'Hey, look- not broken.' On top of that- you tested pulse lasers. Not the ACTUAL equipment/projectiles Security/Raiders/Mercs/Tators/Lings/Vamp's/Etc. Etc. Could actually have access too. 

You are right, but I had a good reason to do so: the points were both to show the natural resistance difference between two species, and to show that one could get away and hide/escape/save itself far more easily than the other, so I had to spawn something that shoot at me while I do so. The antags do not have access to a turret, but the amount of shots was not the point, the difference was: "specie A takes X% more to die than specie B", whether it's 10/20 - 25/50 - 100/200 etc. due to the difference in damage of the specific weapon wasn't what I wished to show, the difference between the two species was.

 

43 minutes ago, LordPwner said:

like the scanner calling everything a 'Bogey': 'air force slang an unidentified or hostile aircraft.

Bogey just means "A radar or visual air contact whose identity is unknown.". That is the MTBT definition, which I have picked to name unknown (due to them not being completely identified yet) radar contacts. Could it give a better name? Possibly, but changing the name is a trivial operation and (if memory serves me well) the time investment of talking about it in that moment, while I had to tackle other issues to get the mechanic out of the door, to have the mechanic playtested, was probably simply not worth the time in that moment... If I wanted to just have things my way, why would I spend time to create videos to show the development of the feature, its working and progression? I put them out specifically for it to be discussed.

 

4 hours ago, LordPwner said:

You play one, I'm fairly sure CL-04401 due to the app, which you've played them enjoyably from what I've observed from you.

Thank you for the compliment, I have and am applying the feedbacks from my command whitelist application on my new characters that I make (and in a non-denaturating capacity on old ones)- I have worked on punctuation, capitalization of the terms, formatting... I even made a bartender and a chaplain based on the feedbacks I got there, despite absolutely disliking the gameplay of either...

I have personally recovered your bridge remap PR, despite preferring the old layout, because that had a statistically significant positive reception. I could have left it closed and to likely die, but I went out of my way to save it up and have it implemented, against my very own preference. That is the degree in which I value democracy here.

it really feels unfair to hear that you guys think I don't listen to feedbacks, even when I can show to have not only listened to, but specifically implemented the suggestions you guys gave, even against my own personal preference, and without even the need nor expectation to do it.

[GeneralCamo]

In review of the past few months, I believe you are a greatly talented developer. You have shown a capability to work not only on complex tasks, but also to manage the backend well.

However, in review of your recent whitelist app, I see myself agreeing that you take things personally. You're talented and enthusiastic, but the manner in which you engage in discussion is concerning from a development perspective. Work on that, and I will easily flip to a positive.

I update my opinion to neutral, trending towards soft no.

[KingOfThePing]

Nothing has changed from my perspective. Still very much against this application, despite the technical knowledge.

[Arrow768]

Trial completed. Moved to the archive.