‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 719

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Kleya has practiced that line for months.

EDIT: Fixed a typo. Thanks for catching it!

19 Comments

“Not very good”… )))

In the last panel, the mom’s last speech bubble doesn’t make sense. It should either say: “Maybe you could help him learn–“, or: “Maybe you could give him some tips/advice/suggestions/pointers–“, or (as a combination): “Maybe you could give him some tips/advice/etc. to help him learn–“

I think there’s a typo in the last panel? Did you mean “Maybe you could help him learn-” ?

“Not very good” ‘…as a person. I’m an amazing programmer but technically that’s not what they asked.’

My thoughts exactly!

actually based on what little we know . she does seem to be a fairly good person that was raised by at least one questionable parent. It is just like a lot of people you need to get to/see the inner core of her

I would agree with this. I really think her brashness before was mostly because at least one parent kept encouraging her. She’s since seen the folly of that way of life and is trying quite hard to get her life back on the right track. While also trying not to admit she has any such problem. since in the general society there’s no such thing as a reformed hacker, it’s just and actively evil one and a dead one. Even though she’s trying hard to reform.

Well I think that’s half true at least. IIRC she IS self-taught.

The hilarity is that K doesn’t know the difference between being a programmer and a hacker.

She is not very good at being a programmer and not being a hacker.

Because she’s having to teach herself the difference.

Which in this world is purely whether or TENka will exile/ban/kill you over it.

For their own reasons, having nothing to do with any actual difference.

Like the difference between religion and witchcraft.

I really like Kleya’s expressions in panels two and four. The hair movement in panel two is really nice and flowing. Good show of motion! The overall layout, posing, and perspective in the last panel is great! And Kleya seems to have a prettier figure than usual in panel one. 😉

A hacker is actually a programmer with an instinct for it and an ability to write code “freeform” or “on-the-fly”.

What most people these days seem to think a hacker is are actually crackers and vandalz.

Crackers break into systems (they “crack” them), and vandalz destroy things.

Phreeks are accused of being crackers, and to some extent it’s true, but they confine their break ins to the phone system itself. They get accused of being vandalz as well, but they care more for the phone system and it’s integrity than the phone companies do.

It’s possible for someone to be more than one of these things, but vandalz and hackers are fairly well opposed to each other. Vandalz destroy things, and hackers have an ideal of do no harm, and share the knowledge with those that can be responsible with it.

A couple of the old school standards for being a hacker are that you have to know machine language, and that you can’t name yourself a hacker, rather the community of hackers name you as such to recognize your talents.
(As a sidenote, hackers make great tech support for fixing problems, but not so great at dealing with customers. That’s because their instincts and inquisitive nature lends itself to finding and fixing problems in machines, but with regards to dealing with humans, they often don’t understand them very well, especially the irrational ones.)

Of course in the world of Not A Villain, the public has very little understanding if any of these differences, and most of the survivors with actual programming skills are probably just as ignorant. Even if they aren’t, it’s not a subject you could probably broach without risking a lynch mob forming.

Programming is as much an art as a science. You can actually identify who wrote the code just by looking even without any rem, comments, or other documentation.
However, there are people that write programs, that have little real understanding and they write the exact way they were taught. They have no creativity or individuality in their programming. Just like a paint by numbers hobbyist, they may make something that works/is functional, but it isn’t very good and shows no talent.

that is one of the best posts I’ve seen in a long time. and you are totally right.
especially about the “Programming is as much an art as a science.” that is so true, especially when you get into the bigger more complex programs you can really tell the difference between someone who just learned the codes, and someone who has mastered the Art. especially when your the one who has to make sense of why it’s not working, or not working they way the want it to and it’s not your own code.

The difference between good coding and spaghetti coding is down to three things:

– Readability
Make sure you use naming conventions for objects, classes, functions, subs and variables. Every integer starts with “i” every object starts with “o” every boolean starts with “bool”, etc. If possible include it’s purpose in the name e.g. iLoopCounter or boolCheckSaveStateFlag

– Structure
If your program can be broken down in sections, make sure you put all functions and subs for each section together and have a separate declaration section for global variables so anyone can see which variables are shared.

– Comments
Each function should clearly state what it does, which global variables are used and your pseudo code should be readable in the comments.

You would think writing those comments is more work but in fact it helps your thought process and ensures that you can pick up your code and update it years later if necessary.

Really most spaghetti code is just lazy programming.

I have a really bad feeling that what Mina is about to say next is going to make me really dislike her. I hope it isn’t the case and she is just leading up to ‘fix my sister’s settings’ in a kind of weird way.

I do love that the mom was like ‘we could all learn to be programmers’. I’m a bit sad that isn’t more of a thing in the story actually, as so far she has seemed to be fairly…. vapid really. Also, would like to learn anything more about the dad since he is trying to learn programming too.

Doubly so as a whole family of programmers would probably raise the effort to find/save the family dramatically. Especially the youngest whose arm isn’t usable with a farming focus. She’s not useful to the cities as is but if she knew how to code – you don’t need both arms usable. And since they’re not in the city – well it’s not like anyone else is around to murder them in their sleep.

not sure vapid is right. more like exhausted from doing what needs to be done to survive and worrying about a daughter that is not doing well and not letting her know it

Teaching the family to program would come with a handful of problems.

1. Even if tenka is recruiting programmers, they probably don’t like people outside tenka teaching eachother. That would raise a few alarms. Non tenka people would be even more alarmed. Teaching people to program isn’t easy to hide, either.

2. Teaching to program is really time intensive, time that family doesn’t have a lot of. Dividing responsibilities makes sense (such as Mina being a singer + people person, Kleya being the antisocial tech support). Using the skills you already have well gets faster results than developing skills you’ll never be more than an amateur at. As I said, this is a survival situation and time is of the essence – they don’t have the luxury of thinking long term.

3. Can you imagine Kleya trying to teach someone else? That would be a hilarious train wreck. It’s hard enough to hide that Kleya knows waaay too much about code without her explicitly trying to explain her thought process to others. What she considers common sense is likely top secret to anyone else.

Teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for life. Teach a man how to code, and you get questions for life.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 719