[MUD-Dev] Re: META: who are we?

[Matt Chatterley <chattemp#ee,port.ac.uk>]

On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:

[Snip]

> How many of you are from a Diku background, like me? And might be
> interested in stuff that is codebase specific? How many find that stuff
> anathema and think it should be avoided at all costs? How many think the
> list is too theoretical, or feel intimidated by the frequent posters and
> by the volume of past history and discussions that seems to be requied
> knowledge in order to participate?

Diku is one direction I haven't come from, really. I tinkered with the 
source, set one up, broke it, and generally had a play in a few hours of 
boredom a couple of years ago, and I've also played on a couple, but 
thats it. PennMUSH, MudOS (and hence, related servers) are the ones which 
feature mostly in my history (and in my here-and-now, also as I see, to 
some extent, future).

My real interests don't lie with 'platform' (one can easily think of a 
type of server as a platform in some way, or perhaps an architecture) 
specific topics, but with more general and applicable things, taking a 
systems view of topics and ideas. Seeing practical topics is good (but 
they tend to veer off, become personalized, and absolutely impossible to 
get into after some time); the theory stuff is my favourite (I'd say we 
have a reasonable balance, actually).

Volume? The list has a huge volume. I scan the messages which arrive in 
my inbox and either delete them in a spot, or move them to another folder 
for later consumption; sometimes the subject line will be enough to 
(dis)interest me, other times I scan the first few paragraphs.

Now, who or what am I? The course I'm studying (computer/electronic 
engineering) sums it up - I'm an engineer, and thats the approach which I 
take to this sort of thing. I don't look at the creation or maintenance 
of a Mud as you might from a software background, I see it has a set of 
systems, whereby the reuseable components (think along the lines of 
Java.Beans), are your transistors and resistors, and assembled systems 
your circuit boards. Lose sight of the 'big picture' and you'll end up 
with a room full of machinery which is far too inflexible to be of any use.

--
	-Matt Chatterley