Words are good, so here is our history.

Building general artificial intelligence… for board games.

By Jeffrey M. Barber

Much has been written about perfect information games like chess, and I am reviewing literature on imperfect games like hearts. As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) and the associated board game. I believe there is a level beyond imperfect games that requires deception. Honestly, it seems like a bad idea to teach machines how to lie, but as a hacker, I am focused on building a worthy adversary.

Inventing an ugly programming language

By Jeffrey M. Barber

Compared to some languages, my language is ugly; just an ugly baby that only a code-father like myself could love. First, I’m embracing curly braces which for many may be insulting. Second, my type system is not as great as I would like; this irks me, but I’m working on it. Third, I’m really accepting a large and complex set of built-in types into my heart, and I’m reminded about RISC vs CISC instruction sets. Compared to many languages, my language appears to be a step backwards. Today, I want to illustrate three things my language can do that your language can’t and why the steps backwards are worth it.

Hacking past the age of 40

By Jeffrey M. Barber

One year ago to this day, on my birthday, I left Meta as one of the few unicorn engineers to focus on living a good life (whatever that meant). While I miss the monotony of my balance sheet going up and to the right, the freedom to do what I want (or nothing) has been fantastic. The urge to do a performance review has been creeping, so I thought I would check in and share things. Beyond a rundown of statuses, there is one bit of wisdom that I want to share and focus on: faith. I mean faith in a multi-dimensional sense.

Infrastructure for Hippies

By Jeffrey M. Barber

Are you sick of all this cloud bullshit? Do you hope blockchain drowns in crypto-bro tears? Are you hoping that K8s just dies in a massive data-center fire? Are you tired of technology fads coming and going? Are you weary of the corporate hell-scape? Well, so am I.

I’m cranky old man that aspires to be a dirty hippie. Sadly, I got addicted to these infernal machines.

ChatGPT is just better than me.

By Jeffrey M. Barber

I’m playing with this ChatGPT thing, and I’m super impressed. For my needs, it is a better copy writer than I am and I wanted to share some examples.

Describe an online platform for building online board games?

The case for a new kind of game engine runtime.

By Jeffrey M. Barber

I’ve switched gears as I set a simple goal for 2023: ship a single game… the hardest way possible. Look at me, I’m being an adult with goals and strategy (it may be a bad strategy, but it’s mine)! I’ll have more details on the game in 2023 as it becomes playable, but I’m building a new runtime for games. I want to explain the reason for the emphasis of runtime over engine, and then I want to make the case for such an investment.