>>DonHop+(OP)
When I saw this title, I first thought it was about understanding the cockroach-like aliens in Factorio, but it is actually about queuing and congestion and parallel processing with conveyor belts and factories!

With the caveat that Factorio is EXTREMELY addictive, properly described as "programmer crack", here are some other Factorio related discussions:

Factorio – a game where you can automate basically anything (factorio.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266471

http://www.factorio.com/

"This game is like crack for programmers." -kentonv (Tech lead for Cloudflare Workers, author of Sandstorm.io, Cap'n Proto)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11269098

Raycasting engine in Factorio game – Facto-RayO v1.0 [video] (youtube.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19878688

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lVAFcDX4eM

Factorio to talk about horizontal scaling of software services (medium.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19095271

https://medium.com/@chrisfauerbach/gamification-of-horizonta...

Mapping Factorio with Leaflet (cloudflare.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18185058

https://blog.cloudflare.com/mapping-factorio-with-leaflet/

>>DonHop+f
Some random Factorio-themed things of my own:

https://imgur.com/c51pTnP - here I tried to invent a way to solve the accessibility issues of moving walkways; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17703131 for context.

https://mastodon.technology/@temporal/100646861775747986 - Factorio-inspired tootstorm about what I'd like to see in an IDE/debugger.

>>X6S1x6+DG
I coined the nickname "Deep Crack" for the EFF's DES cracker. I hope that's not objectionable. The first key's free!

    Coming into Los Angeles
    Bringing in a couple of keys
    But don't touch my bags if you please
    Mister Customs Man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker

https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/humor/deep-crack.txt

>>DonHop+f
Oh my, can someone ping Gwern to add Factorio to this list. https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete

>>chrisc+GC
A database is a huge API to share with another team, and queries from other people add load with a principle-agent problem [1]

Give people a firehouse of events or deltas, though, and if they want to query it, performance is now their problem - they build the database, update it, index it, etc.

This is part of scaling organisationally, not just removing the database as a bottleneck.

Events are also a route to making cache invalidation - one of the hardest problems in CS, as we know - tractable. Build your caches as services that consume the firehouse, and invalidate based on a join between events and the cached data.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_prob...

>>DonHop+(OP)
There's a similar web game - http://www.factoryidle.com, for those who can't/won't play FactorIO, with a similarly addictive quality.

>>rishav+yq1
> It just might be the highest rated game on Steam

Indeed the second best positive percentage according to steamdb: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/

No 29 if you just sort by positive reviews.

>>twic+tb2
Factorio packages are Blueprints and Blueprint Books! And the equivalent of npmjs.com would be https://factorioprints.com .

https://wiki.factorio.com/Blueprint

https://wiki.factorio.com/Blueprint_book

https://factorioprints.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/7vnkze/blueprint_...

One of the stages of evolution of a Factorio programmer is learning how to make scalable modular blueprints that you can stamp down one next to another, with their inputs and output routed so they all plug together easily and run in parallel, without having to be manually wired together.

>>root_a+ly
Katherine of Sky has some great "pair programming" videos where she teams up with other experienced players. It's amazing to see how diverse different people's styles can be! You really get insight into how their minds works.

I can't remember which ones are multi player, but here are some of her playlists -- awesome stuff:

Factorio Tutorials Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4o6UvJIdPNpm9szThfI-...

Factorio 0.17: Entry Level to Megabase 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el9Ih1gg3i4&list=PL4o6UvJIdP...

Factorio 0.17: Pyanodon with Aven1017

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4o6UvJIdPNpUZ230345G...

Factorio Landfill Avalanche! (MP with Aven!)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4o6UvJIdPNrEWhjZOzfC...

Factorio ASMR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7dasB1a5J0&list=PL4o6UvJIdP...

>Rabbi Tricky: OMG KoS, your voice, your choice of words, it makes me really relaxed. I saw it mentioned before, but its like Bob Ross. Happy little trees are now in my mind, together with happy little miners and such. Please don't make this a one time video, i really love this. Much love

>mithrane: KOS - You really are the Female Bob Ross of Factorio. Love your videos and love this concept.