From: Christopher Allan Webber Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2016 04:59:29 +0000 (-0600) Subject: doc: Add tutorial intro to the new manual. X-Git-Tag: v0.4.0~52 X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=3980bf3b22b75fa51fe514f9a38f4d7232843fe2;p=8sync.git doc: Add tutorial intro to the new manual. * doc/8sync-new-manual.org: Fill in "Intro to the tutorial" section. --- diff --git a/doc/8sync-new-manual.org b/doc/8sync-new-manual.org index b352a2b..0115003 100644 --- a/doc/8sync-new-manual.org +++ b/doc/8sync-new-manual.org @@ -80,7 +80,41 @@ Onward! ** Intro to the tutorial -** A fun little IRC bot +IRC! Internet Relay Chat! +The classic chat protocol of the Internet. +And it turns out, one of the best places to learn about networked +programming. + +In the 1990s I remember stumbling into some funky IRC chat rooms and +being astounded that people there had what they called "bots" hanging +around. +From then until now, I've always enjoyed encountering bots whose range +of functionality has spanned from saying absurd things, to taking +messages when their "owners" were offline, to reporting the weather, +to logging meetings for participants. +And it turns out, IRC bots are a great way to cut your teeth on +networked programming; since IRC is a fairly simple line-delineated +protocol, it's a great way to learn to interact with sockets. +(My first IRC bot helped my team pick a place to go to lunch, previously +a source of significant dispute!) +At the time of writing, venture capital awash startups are trying to +turn chatbots into "big business"... a strange (and perhaps absurd) +thing given chat bots being a fairly mundane novelty amongst hackers +and teenagers everywhere in the 1990s. + +We ourselves are going to explore chat bots as a basis for getting our +feet wet in 8sync. +We'll start from a minimalist example using an irc bot with most of +the work done for us, then move on to constructing our own actors as +"game pieces" which interface with our bot, then experiment with just +how easy it is to add new networked layers by tacking on a high score +to our game, and as a finale we'll dive into writing our own little +irc bot framework "from scratch" on top of the 8sync actor model. + +Alright, let's get going. +This should be a lot of fun! + +** A silly little IRC bot ** Battle bot!