A Little More Programming

Hello readers! Week two is complete and I am really enjoying the work that I am doing. I am still getting better at excel and the nuances of exporting text documents from it, but hopefully I will get better at it as I continue. This week my onsite supervisor introduced me to some more coding and programming, which I thought was really interesting. So, for this post, I will talk about the programming aspect of my internship, the actually-really-boring-at-the-present-moment data I've collected while playing games, and some of the challenges and victories from this week.

The programming is very much what I expected it to be. We take a game and we program the pay lines, the bonus games, and the reel strips so that what the game pays matches with what the mathematical design of the game intended. We are programming using C#, which is not that different from the Java that we used in AP Computer Science. Working with this made me realize that I love taking the time and finding the right code, kind of in the same way one might enjoy solving a math problem. As nerdy as it sounds, I just get a certain feeling of fulfillment after finding the correct answer. We are starting slow, so I should finish my first game on Monday. After I get the hang of it, my supervisor said he would just give me three of four games to finish on my own.

As far as the Facebook data goes, we collected a little more than half of it. And as I pondered how I was going to write my blog, I realized the data we collected really is not all that interesting. It's just how many spins I won out of the first 100, or how many credits did I start with, or how many ads popped up during time of play. Additionally, any sort of really interesting data or interpretations of data I can't actually publish since they are important for the company. What I can tell you is that you should never play as a guest, because it appears as if you win more when you sign in with Facebook. Hopefully when we retrieve all of the data, there will be something more intriguing to tell you.

Challenges: Reel vs. Real. For the first part of our programming lessons, my supervisor kept using the phrase "spin the reels," which was referring to pressing spin and watching the slots do their spinny thing. However, because of my time at BASIS, being exposed to such advanced math classes like Category Theory and Vector Calculus, I thought he meant "spin the reals." My mind was so blown! I thought it was one of those things like when Mrs. Bailey tells you to take infinity and bend it on itself, so negative and positive infinity are the same, and the linear reality of numbers becomes a circular one. Spin the reals?! What does that even mean?! Luckily, my confusion was quickly solved and I was on my merry way.

Victories:  I became acquainted with most of the staff during the lunch breaks this week. Usually I would go out to lunch, but lately I stayed in the lunch room and met everyone. They are all really nice people, and they are all quite funny! It's a wonderful environment to work in.

Thanks for reading guys! Here comes another week of fun and frivolity at the office.