[HN Gopher] The Farmer Was Replaced [video]
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The Farmer Was Replaced [video]
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-10-22 20:23 UTC (13 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| skeltoac wrote:
| I played this! The quadcopter with the straw hat got me. Funny
| and great fun. At the end I was still full of ideas for
| optimizing my code and the dev was making breaking changes that
| would require a full rewrite (a good time guaranteed) but I was
| more compelled to go back to Factorio due to the Space Age
| expansion. The rest of this comment would be about Factorio but
| writing on HN does not help the factory to grow.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| As someone with hours of time in Factorio pre-space age update,
| I've really struggled to get back into the game. I really want
| to build out a mega base with the new train logic, but every
| time I try to get into it it just feels like work. Space age
| seems like it had a pretty lukewarm reception, and some of the
| tech tree changes seem like artificial padding (cliff
| explosives).
| mixel wrote:
| Yeah, the cliff explosives being gated behind vulcanus sucks
| a bit but they made the cliffs a lot more bearable in 2.0 I
| think for a megabase run its a matter of how fast you can
| reach legendary and process everything in it and once you got
| that you can go really into megabasing this game. Sadly they
| nerfed trains so hard by introducing Quality since everything
| got better but trains stayed the same which is a shame
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Trains still got buffed by overhead rails. Those enable
| very compact designs, allow for easier hookups and reduce
| the usual intersection/signals pain by a lot.
|
| I agree that no quality or endgame upgrades for trains is
| an odd choice, but I guess that's what the mods are for.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| For me factorio is a one playthrough kinda thing. I don't get
| off on endless optimization and making it bigger for the sake
| of bigger, feels like work.
|
| That said, I was more than happy to build the base back from
| scratch in space age, and I find the expansion to be every
| bit as fun as the base game. So I endorse it. Especially as
| you already know how to do some things quicker.
| nness wrote:
| That was my first impression when I picked it up -- the game
| strongly suggests you start from the start, and re-loading a
| pre-Space Age save will result in many things breaking. I
| gave in and started over, worried I'd need to spend dozens of
| hours just building up to where I was before.
|
| But this wasn't the case -- Space Age isn't only new content,
| but a complete re-balance of the original game. It is far far
| less grindy and requires much less baby-sitting of
| production.
|
| Your first space platform, the ships, and the planets, are
| best thought of as unique Factorio-inspired puzzles. Each
| planet is like a Factorio game-mode to solve, with its own
| restrictions to design around.
|
| I think those who have hundreds of hours in the base-game
| have to un-learn of the base game to pick up the DLC. Many of
| the complaints are pointed at the tech tree changes -- they
| wanted an expansion on what was there, not a recreation. But
| for me now, I wouldn't recommend Factorio without Space Age.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I'll be honest, I don't think Space Age was all that good as
| an expansion. The developers really focused on giving the
| player new types of logistics challenges to solve, but that
| was never what I wanted. I wanted the same Factorio gameplay,
| but with more stuff to build. So out of the four new planets,
| the only one I actually enjoyed building on was Vulcanus
| (because it plays pretty much like vanilla Factorio but with
| new recipes). The lead dev is also well known for disliking
| logistics bots and wishes they had never been added to the
| game. And the expansion shows that, with (again) three of the
| four planets having mechanics to make use of bots more
| difficult if not outright impossible (Aquilo).
|
| All in all, the developers have a _very_ different vision of
| what makes the game fun than I do, and that meant the
| expansion wasn 't much fun for me. If I play the game more in
| the future, I'll probably do so with the expansion disabled.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Luckily, there are lots of mods which make the base game
| more. I really enjoyed my bobs + angels run. I'm sure it
| would be even more fun if you opted into quality on top to
| really go mad.
| vrighter wrote:
| I had spent ages optimizing my maze solver (
| https://github.com/VrIgHtEr/TheFarmerSolvedAMaze ).
| Meticulously going over which operations take how many ticks.
| But then the dev made a bunch of breaking changes and couldn't
| be bothered to rewrite everything.
| __jonas wrote:
| > the dev was making breaking changes that would require a full
| rewrite
|
| This is funny because I already get the feeling a lot with
| management sim / automation type games that I'm pretty close to
| doing the kind of thing I'd do at work, except only the fun
| parts and without getting paid. Often that's the reason I quit
| playing these types of games after a while - having to deal
| with migrating legacy code after breaking API changes would
| bring this feeling to a new level I bet.
| grogenaut wrote:
| That's why I don't tend to play these games. I was about 5
| hours into trs1000 when I was like man I could just learn GPU
| or fpga with a real editor instead but that would be useful.
| And stopped playing. With factorio I could be laying out
| circuit boards. So I did that instead.
| abtinf wrote:
| To make a programming game true to life, it could have a
| prestige mechanic where you keep all your code/scripts, but the
| api introduces breaking changes and you have to rewrite.
|
| "Good job! Halfway through the workday on Thursday, some big
| brain engineer in a distant department has decided to change
| the order of for loop clauses in the interpreter, so now it's
| "for variable declarations; variable modifications; conditional
| checks {}". They adamantly refuse to revert the change because
| "it makes more sense to group variable stuff together". Prod is
| down now. Have fun!
| phantasmish wrote:
| Documentation should often be wrong.
|
| There should be five options for each piece of tooling, none
| of which quite work the same way, all of which have a fan-
| base singing their praises, and three of which have critical
| problems you probably won't find out about until you try
| them. Then the one you pick gets abandoned when you're part
| way done. (this feature only for the Javascript and Python
| DLC)
|
| Example farms should use old versions of libraries that are
| no longer maintained.
|
| Interfacing with other farms should require manually faking a
| downgrade of some protocol you're using, because the older
| one is no longer available for you and they can't/won't
| upgrade.
|
| You should be forced to design certain parts of the system in
| ways that are harder to use and constantly break when
| changing other parts, just so the _appearance_ of those parts
| is "on brand". This should require re-writing functionality
| that would otherwise be supplied "for free" by a library.
|
| When you're finally getting things how you want them, your
| farm should get cancelled and the whole thing abruptly burned
| to the ground because your parent company just decided to buy
| a different, existing farm instead.
| abtinf wrote:
| It's like you're an omniscient narrator for my career.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Solid 2-3 hours of entertainment; assuming you know python. It's
| also not as complicated as I expected.
| ckdarby wrote:
| Currently a sweet spot with Steam games if you price them
| correctly to the value they bring.
|
| I'm working on a very simple incremental game that has exploded
| in popularity called, A Game About Feeding A Black Hole.
| unquietwiki wrote:
| Just looked it up: looks cool & added it to wishlist. Did you
| happen to play "Solar 2" years back?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Did you pay DangerouslyFunny on Youtube to play that or does
| he just play every new steam demo with incremental features?
| It is his business basically.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| The game looks fun and pretty, but am I the only one to get
| triggered by the "replaced" naming?
|
| All of these eager claims to replace humans feel violently
| antisocial. (And in many instances hypocritical if coming from
| people who defensively claim "it's just a tool"...)
| gruez wrote:
| >am I the only one to get triggered by the "replaced" naming?
|
| >All of these eager claims to replace humans feel violently
| antisocial
|
| Yeah they should be using corporate euphemisms like "let go" or
| whatever!
| lan321 wrote:
| The farmer is taking the next step in their career journey!
| blargthorwars wrote:
| You're absolutely correct. A better name would be "The Farmer
| Was Augmented <emdash> By Your Friendly AI" <emoji "happy">
| <emoji "friednship">
| afandian wrote:
| More like "the farmer was sent to live on the farm"
| aduwah wrote:
| The Farmer Was Made Into Sausage By Automation
| sebstefan wrote:
| Farming isn't artistry, society benefits from its automation
|
| Is it still bad if the farmer gets replaced?
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Is it still bad if the farmer gets replaced?_
|
| A farmer is an owner of a farm. To replace the farmer you
| would have to completely eliminate the entire concept of
| human ownership that we hold. Socialist or other community
| ownership structures around farms wouldn't do as that would
| not replace the farmer, it would make everyone a farmer.
|
| _> society benefits from its automation_
|
| Economies benefit from its automation. It's far less clear if
| societies benefit. Farm work is hard, but there is a sense of
| accomplishment when it is done, which is good for the psyche.
| The never ending "bullshit" jobs that most people seem to
| find themselves in nowadays has not lead to happiness.
| sebstefan wrote:
| > To replace the farmer you would have to completely
| eliminate the entire concept of human ownership that we
| hold.
|
| Why?
|
| > Economies benefit from its automation. It's far less
| clear if societies benefit. Farm work is hard, but there is
| a sense of accomplishment when it is done, which is good
| for the psyche. The never ending "bullshit" jobs that most
| people seem to find themselves in nowadays has not lead to
| happiness.
|
| "Farming is good for the psyche" doesn't hold to the
| suicide rates.
|
| Automate hard jobs where people kill themselves or destroy
| their bodies, future generations get jobs that are easier
| on the body and they get to live healthy longer. It's not
| rocket science!
|
| Why aren't you a farmer?
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Why?_
|
| I already attempted to explained why. If there is a gap I
| overlooked or if something wasn't made clear, you're
| going to have to try and work with me with greater
| specificity.
|
| _> "Farming is good for the psyche" doesn't hold to the
| suicide rates._
|
| Farmers are known to have high suicide rates, but being
| the owner doesn't imply doing the work. That is the role
| of the farmhand. I cannot find anything to suggest that
| suicide rates are high for farmhands.
|
| _> Why aren 't you a farmer?_
|
| I don't understand your question. I am a farmer.
| sebstefan wrote:
| Ok I get the confusion
|
| The framing of the debate is not using your terminology
| so this isn't useful
|
| Being a farmer isn't owning a farm, it's doing the
| farming. Farmhands are farmers. This is the definition
| that most people have, and if we use your definition, the
| entire debate doesn't make sense. Remember we're talking
| about a game, and the game is called "replacing the
| farmer", in which you don't play a humanoid android
| handing out cash to a previous owner to buy a farm and
| then sitting on his ass paying out farmhands. The game is
| about automating the farming. There is no reference to
| ownership.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Being a farmer isn 't owning a farm_
|
| Not according to the government. To legally become a
| farmer you need farm receipts of a certain amount or
| more. Selling your labour to a farmer is not that. And
| not according to the dictionary either. There are
| multiple words surrounding this topic for good reason.
|
| _> Farmhands are farmers._
|
| It is possible that a farmer also works on his farm, or
| another farmer's farm for that matter, but they would be
| a farmhand while in that capacity. People can be more
| than one thing, unsurprisingly. But not all farmers are
| also farmhands and not all farmhands are also farmers.
| Many farmers never lift a finger, so to speak. I
| personally work with farmers who don't even know what is
| growing in their fields.
|
| _> Remember we 're talking about a game, and the game is
| called "replacing the farmer"_
|
| Actually, we were talking about some pedantic take on the
| word "replace", which transitioned into a pedantic take
| on the word "farmer". There is no discussion about a game
| going on in this thread. This indicates that you didn't
| bother to read the thread before replying. Why?
| almosthere wrote:
| I agree with you here. It's kind of like programmers are
| not really programming anymore (well many aren't they're
| telling AI what to do). Our "program-hand" is the LLM.
| 9rx wrote:
| Telling what an AI/LLM what to do is programming in the
| same sense that telling a C++ compiler/virtual machine
| what to do is programming. In both cases you're just
| describing in language what you want the machine to
| execute.
|
| But you may have a point that programming hasn't been a
| thing since toggle switches were the only input into a
| computer.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> > Being a farmer isn't owning a farm_
|
| _> Not according to the government._
|
| Why would we care what _they_ think? Depending on the
| government we 're talking about, that could be an
| ignominious distinction. One government that comes to
| mind most recently focused its efforts on creating fake
| memes and myspace pages of political opponents, to troll
| them, while the same government failed to provide basic
| services to its people (and continues to do so).
|
| Instead of asking the government what words mean (Orwell
| wrote on this idea), we can just ask the people what the
| words mean. And the people say that 'farmer' includes
| folks doing the actual cultivation, even if they don't
| own a thing.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Why would we care what they think?_
|
| Well, with the exception of Hong Kong, which isn't
| exactly a farming mecca, Singapore, and Eswatini, all
| other English speaking countries are democratic. Which
| means that the government and the people are the very
| same thing, so when the people have decided that's what
| farmer is, that's what farmer is to basically everyone
| (there are always outliers who like to go against the
| grain, of course).
|
| _> we can just ask the people what the words mean._
|
| There's an old saying: "Actions speak louder than words".
| People will make up bullshit if you ask them. More
| revealing is to look at how people actually use the word
| "farmer" in practice. And it turns out that we do -- and
| then record that use in a book known as the dictionary.
| Like I said in an earlier comment, it echoes the same.
|
| _> And the people say that 'farmer' includes folks
| doing the actual cultivation_
|
| Sure. There are also people who use the word "farmer" to
| refer to someone who creates web/social media content.
| But these are outlier uses. Obviously all words have been
| made up on the spot, and can be made up on the spot
| (again) any time you so wish. You've not stumbled upon
| any kind of revelation there. But in going that way
| you've made it clear that you're not paying attention to
| the discussion that is taking place.
| cies wrote:
| I like the word farmer to be replaced.
|
| It usually means EITHER land cultivator OR animal exploiter.
|
| My choice of word maybe gives away that I'm not so okay with
| the latter category. While I think the first category is
| doing God's work on earth feeding the ever growing human
| population.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> My choice of word maybe gives away that I 'm not so okay
| with the latter category._
|
| I initially figured that use of the cultivator was also
| intended to be in the same vein, as seen by the no-till
| advocates. I was quite surprised that you later call it
| God's work. Mouldboard mafia representing.
| tantalor wrote:
| What's so special about artists?
|
| Farming is an ancient human practice. It would be a huge loss
| to society if we forgot how to do it with our hands, without
| automation.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I don't disagree with your central point, humans were
| creating art hundreds of thousands of years before they
| started farming at large scales. Creating art is a fairly
| fundamental aspect of our species.
| hosteur wrote:
| You are not alone. I don't get why you are downvoted.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >All of these eager claims to replace humans feel violently
| antisocial
|
| Then I suggest you dig ditches with a spoon.
|
| The problem isn't replacing human labor in itself. It's a few
| hording all the resources and leaving the rest to starve, aka
| the luddites and why they revolted.
|
| If you had a way to live, then boutique farming, or whatever
| would be leisure if you chose to do that.
| ceving wrote:
| Is this Windows only?
| mixel wrote:
| No the game is also fully playable on linux via Proton (About
| other platforms I have no clue)
| intrikate wrote:
| Excellent news, I can play the game on my Steam Deck with the
| on-screen keyboard!
| sd9 wrote:
| I played this:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLesViK53beXfFohR1I08S...
|
| Skip the first video. The early game is painful if you already
| know how to program (they gate things like variables, loops, and
| functions behind unlocks). And tbh I didn't know how to make a
| video or use a microphone when I made that video. I just sat down
| one evening and played it - I had no idea it would resonate with
| people the way it did.
|
| It's a great game, and I imagine a very good way to learn
| programming in a goal oriented way. But I concur that there's not
| a great deal of content if you already know how to program.
| shhsshs wrote:
| Fun to see you here - I discovered this game through your
| videos! I think despite the lack of raw "content", I got a LOT
| of playtime out of this game by trying to push higher on the
| leaderboards.
| sd9 wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| I've considered trying to do some hyper optimisation, taking
| into account the number of cycles each instruction takes - it
| seems that a lot of people are interested in that.
|
| That's not my natural style though. I've had plenty of
| criticism for not being performance sensitive, but that's not
| really how I unwind (although I do plenty of optimisation at
| work!).
|
| It could be fun to explore ingame though.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Turtles are old-school, farming is the new cool. Is there a
| dating-option? Just asking as a Stardew Valley-friend..
|
| OK, jokes aside. I've started playing this, when 1.0 was released
| some weeks ago, and this is quite good for what it is. It's doing
| many things the right way, like allowing coding with an external
| editor, having a proper coding-experience even with the built-in
| tools, and collectable hats.
|
| Everyone should buy this and learn the basics. It's cheap enough
| for most people.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I am playing this right now! A very nice, addictive game. The
| programming language is a kind of subset of Python.
|
| The in-game editor is still a bit clunky, but one can edit the
| source code in an external editor like VS Code. The game has an
| auto-reload option.
|
| Caution! Just because one saves the code in the external editor
| doesn't mean the entire game state is saved! It cost me a few
| unlocked upgrades the first time I closed the game, not saving
| because I thought it automatically does so. One has to save the
| game state explicitly, before closing.
|
| I already have the full game area and a max speed drone, but I'm
| only just about to implement planting cacti. So it'll be a while
| before I unlock multiple drones. But I have already implemented
| efficient algorithms for planting a giant Pumpkin, Sunflowers and
| Poly cultures.
|
| What the game could have is that dictionaries retain their
| insertion order and a built-in array.sort. And it is sad that the
| nice music stops running as soon as one starts the game.
| madethemcry wrote:
| I did not play this (yet!), but just by watching this video I see
| how it overlaps with the coding games on https://code.org/en-US
| (Hour of Code!) in terms of having a code + gaming view to solve
| a challenge.
|
| When I was teaching coding to kids, code.org was the to-go place
| besides using Scratch, to introduce coding patterns (mostly:
| conditional, loops).
|
| An example is the famous Minecraft labyrinth [1]. There is also a
| Frozen themed one. If you have kids (~6y+), that's some fun way
| to get started instead of diving directly into actual code.
|
| [1]
| https://studio.code.org/courses/mc/units/1/lessons/1/levels/...
| djmips wrote:
| teaching optimization this way seems ideal
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I bounced off this game.
|
| It was fun and rewarding early on, as an idle game addict, but
| there's a massive complexity cliff.
|
| You go from "just plant the newest crop on every square" to
| "Okay, now you need to manage farm-wide state in a way that the
| tools do not support, and develop powerful planning systems and
| priority systems to actually yield meaningful results and higher
| level crops" and I just don't understand why.
|
| The reward for rewriting an entire working (nice and simple)
| system to a behemoth full of complex logic and systems
| engineering is.... another crop? At least until you get to spawn
| new drones which is locked off until you've already basically
| beaten the game for some reason?
|
| Like it feels like there is massive missing transition and
| _purpose_ to that complexity. In factorio, you deal with the
| insanity of petrochemicals because it gives you fun toys.
|
| I found myself quite unable to engineer an entire system like
| that just to... improve my rate of resource growth. Somewhat.
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