Okay, so I got this weird idea stuck in my head the other day: lions versus sharks. Yeah, I know, sounds kinda dumb, right? Like one of those playground arguments. But it wouldn’t leave me alone.
Getting Started
So, what did I do? I figured, instead of just thinking about it, I should try and, like, make something. See it happen, sort of. I didn’t have any fancy software or anything. Just my computer and some basic coding stuff I mess around with sometimes. Nothing professional, mind you. I decided to whip up a super simple simulation. Just to get the idea out of my system.
First thing, I needed to set up the basic rules. Where do they fight? That was the first big problem. A lion needs land, a shark needs water. Obvious stuff. So, I thought, okay, maybe a beach? Like, the edge of the water. That seemed like the only place they could even theoretically meet.
Making the Fighters
Then I had to define the ‘lion’ and the ‘shark’ in my little program. I didn’t go crazy with details. Just gave them some basic numbers.
- The Lion: Gave it decent ‘strength’ and ‘speed’ stats, but only on ‘land’. Put a big zero for its ability in ‘water’.
- The Shark: Gave it good ‘strength’ and ‘speed’ too, but only in ‘water’. Zero for ‘land’.
I had to make a small area, like a few squares in my program, that was the ‘beach’ – half land, half water. That’s where the action was supposed to happen.
Coding the Clash
Writing the code was… well, it was messy. I’m no expert. I just wanted them to move around randomly in their own element. If they bumped into each other right at the water’s edge, they’d ‘fight’. The fight was just comparing their strength numbers. Whoever had the higher number won that round. Simple as that. Took me a while, kept getting silly errors. Variables mixed up, conditions wrong. You know how it is. Spent a good hour just figuring out how to make them stop fighting if one moved away from the edge.
Running the Thing
Finally got it running. Watched these little dots (representing the lion and shark) move around. Mostly, they just stayed in their own areas. But sometimes, maybe one time out of ten, they’d actually meet at the ‘beach’ square.
And the results? Pretty much what you’d expect. If the ‘lion’ dot managed to engage the ‘shark’ dot slightly more on the ‘land’ part of the beach square, the lion usually won. If the ‘shark’ dot engaged the ‘lion’ dot more in the ‘water’ part, the shark usually won. It was really sensitive to exactly where they met.
What I Reckon
So, yeah. Spent an afternoon coding up a silly lion vs shark fight. It didn’t prove anything grand. It just showed that environment is everything, which we already knew. But the process, you know, figuring out the logic, fixing the bugs, seeing it run? That was the fun part for me. It wasn’t about finding a definitive answer to a dumb question, but more about the challenge of trying to model it, even in a super basic way. Just messing around, basically. Cleared my head, though. Now I can stop thinking about lions fighting sharks. Maybe.
