ChaelCodes on The Joy of Programming Games and Streaming (RubyConf 2023‪)‬ Software Sessions

Episode Notes
Rachael Wright-Munn (ChaelCodes) talks about her love of programming games (games with programming elements in them, not how to make games!), starting her streaming career with regex crosswords, and how streaming games and open source every week led her to a voice acting role in one of her favorite programming games.

Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego.

mastodon
twitch
Personal website

Programming Games mentioned:


Regex Crossword
SHENZHEN I/O
EXAPUNKS
7 Billion Humans
One Dreamer
Code Rom@ntic
Bitburner

Transcript
You can help edit this transcript on GitHub.

Jeremy:
I'm here at RubyConf San Diego with Rachel Wright-Munn, and she goes by Chaelcodes online. Thanks for joining me today.

Rachael:
Hi, everyone. Hi, Jeremy. Really excited to be here.

Jeremy:
So probably the first thing I'll ask about is on your web page, and I've noticed you have streams, you say you have an interest in not just regular games, but programming games, so.

Rachael:
Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked about this. Okay, so I absolutely love programming games.
When I first started streaming, I did it with Regex Crossword.
What I really like about it is the fact that you have this joyful environment where you can solve puzzles and work with programming, and it's really focused on the experience and the joy.
Are you familiar with Zach Barth of Zachtronics?

Jeremy:
Yeah. So, I've tried, what was it? There's TIS-100.
And then there's the, what was the other one? He had one that's...

Rachael:
Opus Magnum? Shenzhen I/O?

Jeremy:
Yeah, Shenzhen I/O.

Rachael:
Oh, my gosh. Shenzhen I/O is fantastic. I absolutely love that.
The whole conceit of it, which is basically that you're this electronics engineer who's just moved to Shenzhen because you can't find a job in the States.
And you're trying to like build different solutions for these like little puzzles and everything.

It was literally one of the, I think that was the first programming game that really took off just because of the visuals and everything.

And it's one of my absolute favorites. I really like what he says about it in terms of like testing environments and the developer experience.

Cause it's built based on assembly, right?

He's made a couple of modifications. Like he's talked about it before where it's like The memory allocation is different than what it would actually look like in assembly and the way the registers are handled I believe is different, I wouldn't think of assembly as something that's like fun to write, but somehow in this game it is. How far did you get in it?

Jeremy:
Uh, so I didn't get too far. So, because like, I really like the vibe and sort of the environment and the whole concept, right, of you being like, oh, you've been shipped off to China because that's the only place that these types of jobs are, and you're working on these problems with bad documentation and stuff like that.
And I like the whole concept, but then the actual writing of the software, I was like, I don't know.

Rachael:
And it's so hard, one of the interesting things about that game is you have components that you drop on the board and you have to connect them together and wire them, but then each component only has a specific number of lines.
So like half the time I would be like, oh, I have this solution, but I don't have enough lines to actually run it or I can't fit enough components, then you have to go in and refactor it and everything.
And it's just such a, I don't know, it's so much fun for me.
I managed to get through all of the bonus levels and actually finish it.
Some of them are just real, interesting from both a story perspective and interesting from a puzzle perspective. I don't wanna spoil it too much.
You end up outside Shenzhen, I'll just say that.

Jeremy:
OK. That's some good world building there.

Rachael:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
Because in your professional life, you do software development work.
So I wonder, what is it about being in a game format where you'r