[Raphmedia]

> As a side note, if anyone's interested in looking a bit more into "programming as magic" there's a great book series called The Wizardry

If you like that kind of thing and you enjoy/don't mind anime, there's also the serie Knight’s & Magic. It is about a programmer being reborn in a world where people wield big "golem" armors. The protagonist then proceed to make his own version, completly disregarding the philosophy of that world. Thinking of those golems as nothing more than machines and using magic as nothing more than "inputs/outputs" for those machines and the world.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/knights-magic

"A genius programmer and hardcore robot otaku is reborn into a world of knights and magic, where huge robots called Silhouette Knights roar across the land! Now reborn as Ernesti Echevalier, he uses his vast knowledge of machines and programming talents to begin to make his ultimate robot. But his actions have unexpected results...?! The dreams of a robot otaku will change the world!"

[btown]

Ah, K&M. Lots of potential, many fun moments, but it's far from rationalist fiction. Still, if you ever need wish fulfillment that the time you spend at work beating down technical debt could instead allow you to fight monsters and cast spells leveraging the mana pool of a giant robot, it's a fun read/watch.

From an unofficial (and somewhat grammatically atrocious) English translation of the original novel [0]:

> Normally, Eru would have given up at this stage and would have chosen a more practical spell. But he knew how to solve the problem because of his unique skills ― programming concept. He had experience in designing and coding software to handle multiple variables. That's why he skipped the beginner magic phase and jumped straight into the 'modified magic' phase. Reviewing the structure of the physical boost script, Eru compressed the structure to minimise the number of variables, creating subscripts that would automatically extract the status of the body. After compiling it, he just needed to design the user interface to make it easier to control, so as to lessen the burden.

> Complicated projects like the improvement of scripts was not something that could be done easily by anyone. Eru, however, was not aware of this, completing the improvement shortly, and the patch was a big enhancement. But even so, it was still difficult to control magic that strained the mind heavily. But with his extraordinary processing ability, it was not much. No one realised that a historical revolution had occurred, but for Eru, this was just a small step in his journey.

[0] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

[Raphmedia]

I also really loved the episode of "In Another World With My Smartphone" where the character aquires the spell "program" which lets a caster enchant a physical object with a command.

The regular wizards use it to, let's say, make a door open when someone says "open" or other minor one-step commands.

The protagonist, a modern human stuck in a magical world, uses it differently. He creates sequences with it. He scripts complex programs.

[Minor Spoiler] As an example, he ends up creating a magical pistol. When the users speak "reload", the pistol (which the character imbued with a few spells using "enchant") casts a detection spell to finds the closest bullets. If bullets are found, the pistol then casts the spell "aports" on it. The bullets are teleported into the chamber of the pistol. He uses the same concept but with transmogrification enchantments to add voice commands such as "sword mode" or "pistol mode" that transform the pistol into a sword and vice-versa.

[cbhl]

I highly recommend reading the light-novel translations of "In Another World With My Smartphone" as well! You can buy them on Amazon Kindle, or you can subscribe to read the pre-prints at http://j-novel.club/.

[Baeocystin]

I was a little disappointed that a 600+ year-old fairy didn't remember to properly set conditionals, though. :D

[throwanem]

> it's far from rationalist fiction

Is that bad? Like any didactic subtype of the genre, rationalist fiction often struggles to succeed in both of the goals set for it; the only example I've as yet found enjoyable - and extremely so! I strongly recommend it - is Unsong by Scott Alexander, also of Slate Star Codex.

[arkh]

Not purely rational you have parahumans where most protagonists' acts have some logic behind it. Not a lot of evil people just because they're evil, and not a lot of pure heroes either.

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ if you want something to read for next month(s).

[btown]

And in case anyone isn’t aware, the sequel started yesterday at https://www.parahumans.net !

[pavel_lishin]

Seconding Unsong. The end felt kind of cheap to me, but the journey was absolutely worth it.

[marvy]

Agree on both counts.

[throwanem]

How else would you have it end?

[marvy]

Fair question. I could not have done better. But still.

[randomstudent]

Unsong is not exactly rational fiction. The author itself claims it isn't (some people claim it is despite this fact, though).

[throwanem]

I can see both sides of that argument, and I'd be lying to say I didn't consider Unsong rationalist fiction at least partly as an attempt to redeem the genre in my own estimation.

[moron4hire]

Authors aren't reliable narrators of their work.

[coldtea]

>Ah, K&M. Lots of potential, many fun moments, but it's far from rationalist fiction.

Hasn't that gone out of style with Zola?

[stryan]

I did see that while browsing newer shows the other day but I guess I didn't see the programming part and thought it was too generic to watch. I'll have to give it another look.

Thanks for the recommendation!

[Raphmedia]

It's yet another take on the "regular modern human gets teleported into a magical world and becomes super strong because he has knowledge" trope that is all over the place in recent animes.

That being said, it's an interesting point of view. The character goes so far as taking personal a fight against a "golem plane" solely because he fears that the invention of planes will means that this world, like ours, won't have mechas. He doesn't have a care in the world but to use magic as a means to program mechas and completely disregards the fact that magic should be exciting in itself.

[mzzter]

I really loved the pacing of Knights and Magic, but the fact that the MC was a programmer in a past life is only relevant for maybe 3 episodes.

[hkon]

I followed this link and I have watched a few episodes. Can't get over the first episode intro. Developers life summed up in 30 seconds.

[caseymarquis]

I just watched the whole thing based on this post. 3/5. Not really worth the 5 hours, but it was alright. The premise was neat.

[Raphmedia]

I felt exactly the same while watching it. Neat promise and entertaining. Something you can binge and enjoy without thinking too much. 3/5 is a nice rating when you compare to some of this season's anime series. There are a lot of show that I would rate 0/5 or even -1/5.