Overheard in the office a few years ago:

"Did you know that Tetris was originally written in Haskell?"

"Really? I thought that it was originally written in Russia?"

Hah.

Reminds me of a Facebook post I saw the night after working on a class project at a friend's apartment. I think it was "you know you live with CS people when you come home and hear people talking about the difference between Pickles and Sea Pickles" (CPickle).

You laugh, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

I had this when I played Minecraft a lot. My wife and I (who both played for hours on end almost daily, running servers together) both started the see the world as blocks. It changed our perception quite a bit. It didn't bother us, we thought it was cool. It didn't interfere with anything. We maintained our understanding of reality vs game. Until a creeper blew up our house IRL. That was unusual.

This nearly killed me with Trackmania a few years ago and learning to drive a real car. In Trackmania you had to slam the steering to one side when turning. On a highway... not so much

I had a persistent problem with racing games, because analog sticks always seemed too lightweight and fickle, and basically I mostly could either turn or not turn. Until I finally learned with PS Vita's minuscule sticks to hold the thumb crooked in mid-air and fiddle the stick just a little.

Meanwhile you can't even use 180° wheel controllers with e.g. rally games because that's just not enough precision—you need something closer to 900°, or the car will about-face too often.

It's also weird how little of muscle memory immediately transfers between racing games, specifically sim-ish ones. Each time I switch from one to another, I'm driving like a drunk monkey again. Plus there's plenty of difference between more arcadey handheld games and more involved desktop/big-console ones. Not much surprise that with all this, games barely approach actual driving feel and skill—I've heard that only Assetto Corsa has some magical feedback for steering wheel controllers, that conveys the feel of a car riding on asphalt.

Also, Tetris taught me this: https://media.sketchfab.com/models/c4df0c4fb6904e9e80c13ef8e...

When Call of Duty 4 came out, I played it so much I would have vivid dreams almost nightly of playing "paintball" with friends, suddenly realizing we were using real guns and ammo, and we would continue "playing" even after we realized the death and carnage that was resulting.

Prodigy spoke ppp, was reasonably priced, and still had news access in 99/00 and a good feed at that. At some point they underwent a series of mergers/sell-ofs/rebrands until Yahoo owned them. I think their nntp servers still worked when I switched to cable internet in around 03.

Prodigy offering $400 off a $399 computer at Best Buy if you signed up for a 3 year service agreement was why I had my first modern computer.