[dakom]

Innovative ways to explain code is a great idea and I love the project.

However, I don't love the name.

These are explanations - not stories (unless we consider stories as being 100% exposition). There's no beat, scene, or chapter structure that pushes meaningful values back and forth in the face of conflict ("make it work" isn't a meaningful value - since it's the obvious goal of every character here), no progression or character building, no subtext or sub-agendas, no sense of agency or suspense where the code might pursue something counter to its purpose...

Feel like it's a bit of hijacking of "story" in order to make headlines, since "code explainer" isn't as sexy.

[LyndsySimon]

I get where you're coming from, but "story" here seems more akin to a "user story" than literature.

User stories have been used for quite a long time for both software architecture and establishing/informing QA and testing processes.

This strikes me as user stories without the "user". It's the same concept at a different level of abstraction. A "code story" is to a unit test as a "user story" is to an integration test.

[dakom]

"User stories" have the potential to be a bit different... or at least we can use our imagination to make it so. "As a first-class klutz I want to have my data synced without hitting a save button." Ok - benefit of the doubt: Once upon a time, Jane was on her way to an interview when she slips on a banana peel and breaks her phone. Since ProductX doesn't sync to the cloud - she doesn't know where the interview is and tries her best, from memory. Now she happens to have a fantastic memory but she's also dyslexic and the address she stumbles into is a drug den. Mistaking her for a client and her thinking she's getting a job offer, she accepts a deal and walks off with $10MM of drugs. Now the they're after her - terrified and panicked and not wanting to rely on their forgiving nature, she uses her tech skills and the cash to forge a new identity and moves to another country to found a startup - a competitor to ProductX that has cloud storage, ultimately putting ProductX out of business. She didn't need their product to land a job afterall. Happily ever after. Except for ProductX. So ProductX really should add a sync feature.

> This strikes me as user stories without the "user"

It strikes me as "code stories" without the story. They're literally just explaining the code. Glorified comments with a slick UI.

That is useful though, I really do think it's a cool product - I often feel like comments take up a lot of screen real estate and sometimes want to go deeper with explanations. It is a great idea to move them out and make them more like a slideshow with even more opportunity to do so.

User stories aren't stories either, they are feature requirements from a user's point of view.

I feel like this is all the inverse of when we watch movies that have hackers. There's a craft to storytelling, there's a craft to programming, and we can't just assume that superficial similarity is enough. When a character in a movie types a bunch of garbage onto the screen, that isn't programming. When a software manager describes feature requirements from a user's perspective that's not a story.

I think small children are pretty good at telling the difference since they consume stories voraciously... try reading them a book of "user stories" or "code stories" and see what happens.

(I get that you're saying it's not a story in the literature sense - but that's my point, there is no other sense and these other things are hijacking the term. By "literature" what I really mean is any medium that can properly express a story - song, dance, etc. are all genuine, proven storytelling avenues too.

The reason I jumped on here wasn't to be a downer - it's because I was super excited, I thought someone figured out a way to use code to tell stories! That would be awesome... Unfortunately that's not what's happening here and I was super disappointed. sorry!)