The length of the plan seems like a DnD campaign in terms of length though, it's roughly 3 months of consistent activities, but it may be worth it.
With the second I expect a CTA for a course, with the end result being some type of qualification, perhaps conformance to the startup mentality of the key characters, to help people form groups. The point there is to advance projects and also set yourself up as an authority.
At the moment it feels like a not-so-strong mix of the two.
Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25912241 - Jan 2021 (173 comments)
While I love both shows to death, I feel HCF really nailed a lot of the emotional and interpersonal aspects that come with entrepreneurship, venture capital, and engineering leadership.
It was also great watching HCF with my dad who started his career during the tail end of the show, and could call out a number of the technical aspects (eg. PBXes, the COBOL vs OOP wars, the search engine wars, etc).
When donna pointed out how popular chat was, cameron wanted to kill it because it wasnt her idea, even if it was perfectly in line with her vision for what computers could be. To me she's just an arrogant narcissist
> The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ ⓘ BEK-dəl),[1] also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two women have names.[2]
I used to be overly pedantic about the kinds of things programmers often obsess over—like micro-benchmarks, the whole “I use Arch, by the way” attitude, and other obnoxious quirks. But this quote stuck with me and helped me move past that shallow, one-upmanship view of computers. Great show to ones who haven't watched yet.
In season one, Joe and Gordon are the main characters, with Cameron a small step behind them. Donna and Bos were firmly secondary. In season two, Cam and Donna became the focus, Bos became more prominent, and we got a bunch of new characters. Joe and Gordon were still important but clearly had less focus on them. I have to wonder if the plan was for each season to introduce new characters who would be set up to be the season after that's main focus. The Mutiny crew could have been pioneers of gaming in the third season, with some Donna and Cam still there, and special appearances by Gordon and Joe. The new characters from that season could be the main of the internet/virus season. For consistency, Bos could have been the common thread in all of the companies as the business manager going along for the ride as the main characters innovated.
Maybe that wasn't the plan and I'm just spit balling but it would have been a nice way of handling the advancing technology without making the same characters the titans of industry constantly. Not sure how well the fans would have reacted to their favorite characters, even Cameron, being relegated and eventually ghosted.
In fairness, I didn't notice this until my 2nd time watching the series.
kennywinker•6h ago
floren•6h ago
Cameron "it's all in the eyes" Howe annoyed the shit out of me at pretty much all points, which I understand is how they wrote the character but it walked a line of almost making me quit the show. As with the show as a whole, though, she brought me around a bit in the last few eps.
awesome_dude•6h ago
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
hnlmorg•6h ago
There really wasn’t any need for half the dumb shit they did in that show. It didn’t add to the drama, it just made the whole thing feel completely fake. Which is impressive considering they’re writing largely about real world computing history.
And don’t get me started on the characters themselves. I think I liked maybe half the cast. The others made me cringe every time they were on screen.
It’s such a pity because they could have just as successful show if they refined it a little.
aspenmayer•5h ago
What are some tech shows that you like, or dramas, for context?
hnlmorg•5h ago
Mr Robot was a different beast because that was literally about criminal and hacker culture. So you’d expect a little action in that regard.
To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway.
Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
Shows like Stargate are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
But shows like HCF feel like they should be executed like HoCs, yet they’re written like Mr Robot, Stargate, etc. So it’s very jarring to watch every time another gimmick gets thrown in. Maybe I expected too much from that show? But it just felt like they didn’t have any confidence in people’s attention spans.
aspenmayer•5h ago
Can you elaborate a bit about the gimmick(s) in Halt and Catch Fire? I think it's a drama, so there are human concerns and interactions, but that's like, what tv shows are? I don't know what you mean specifically.
> Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
The West Wing is statist propaganda for liberals. House of Cards is statist propaganda for neocons.
> Shows like Mr Robot are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
I actually really appreciate that every hack shown on Mr. Robot had a real world POC and used actually existing tools and techniques. The storyline is hokum and gives hackers a bad name, but black hats are kinda supposed to have a bad name. Elliot is kinda gray hat, but he definitely violated CFAA multiple times and would probably be dead or in jail irl.
tptacek•3h ago
(I think it's a solid B-tier prestige series; I don't hate it).
aspenmayer•2h ago
chipt4•1h ago
Mountain_Skies•1h ago
bananaboy•5h ago
I thought Micro Men was way better executed as a comparison point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men
kennywinker•5h ago
bananaboy•4h ago
protocolture•4h ago
Moto7451•3h ago
ghaff•2h ago
themanmaran•1h ago
It just had too much of that early 2000's cable TV style drama. Which I understand is required since it was on network tv. I honestly think if it was made again today as a netflix/prime series it would be a lot better.