Second Life Tech talk @ Google

Saw this incredible video over at Zac Bowling's site. It's a tech talk by the creators of Second Life about their systems. Very high geek content, especially with the prospect of SL switching over to Mono.

I've been staying away from MMORPG's because I just don't need that kind of time-suck in my life, but once you add a compelling programming model on top of that, the temptation is just getting way too strong. So far I resist, but once they have mono integrated, I may have to poke around a bit.

Last time I got sucked into something like this was back in the early 90s, when I started playing around with LambdaMOO which was completely object oriented and user editable. The language I always thought was a variation on Scheme, but Wikipedia claims it a derivative of Algol. Either way, it was a lot of fun to program in and create the world around yourself. But it was addictive. My roommates all got sucked in and at some point you couldn't call our house because someone was always on LambdaMoo (yes, the day of modems... 2400bps modems).

The only thing that makes Second Life less dangerous is that it's build around a thriving economy. So, it's not only conceivable, but an actual reality that you can finance this habit by having the habit and sitting in there coding. I think i'm still going to stay far away for my own sanity.