Incorrect. Anakin programmed Threepio with the desire to serve his mother and with the six languages he spoke at the time.

I would agree its more like modification than building from scratch, but he still had to get in there and noodle with everything. Programming was absolutely involved.

Sounds like copyright infringement to me

Hard agree!

Star Wars was explicitly written by a greasemonkey as gritty and grungy in direct contrast to the sleek, clean, computer-controlled future that dominated SF in that era. Droids function much more like custom cars than assembly-line computers with wireless updates.

Even later in our time but earlier in the SW time line, the one example of mass production, the droid army, was comically bad: incredibly dumb, fragile, and incompetent.

but I don't think he did a bunch of low level stuff as he's a slave without real education

You know, back in the not-so-far-away days, the best programmers didn't have educations and the worst ones did.

Lemmy now is what Reddit used to be like in the early days. I hope the enshittification stays away!

just so much of technology in media is written this way

Especially with star wars, where it's closer to "space fantasy" than "science fiction"

I agree with you, and the part that always sinks this within SW is that all he did was put together a very commonly used droid from spare parts. Protocol droids are all over the place!

Is it impressive to put together a Honda Civic from spare parts in your spare time? Yes. But it's also just a matter of collecting the right parts and having the time to assemble them right. No one is inventing anything new, and it always seemed like that was what EP1 was trying to sort of say.

I mean, obviously I wasn't a slave on Tattooine, but I was a poor kid in a rural community. I figure Ani learned how to fix droids the same way I learned how to fix bikes and computers; I needed it, and couldn't afford a new one, so I had to teach myself how to make it work again, or face going hungry.

A lot of it is... well, kind of like figuring out where puzzle pieces are supposed to fit. Eventually, even if you don't quite know what you're doing yet, you can kind of guess where something is supposed to go. If you have a known good working model to compare to, and a good manual, you can teach yourself all kinds of things if you really need to do it.

That, and he was owned by Watto. Watto, as an employer (fuck that guy generally, but bear with me), had to teach his employee how to operate equipment. How to catalogue his junk and get it working again so it could be sold. Anakin was a smart kid, but he also literally built and scrapped droids for work. He had hours a day and nearly unlimited broken droids to take apart.

I've been accused of wizard shit more than once, and I'm nowhere near the same class as the actual tech wizards. I like to think I know enough to get by and call out bullshit. Honestly, the only gripe I have with how Ani's technical talent was written is that he was unrealistically young. The rest was pretty believable.

The most relatable bit was forgetting to put 3PO's eye back in when he powered him on.

Although, nobody ever asks Gandalf to fix their printer or build their app. He gets to dine with kings.

I'm rusty, but that's either

"Hey! My hemorrhoids are flaring up"

or

"Hands off! That's mine"

or

"Always drink your Ovaltine"

The binary language of moisture vaporators... obv

Really awful, undocumented, spaghetti code open source. But sure, technically correct!

It seems shortsighted of science fiction authors to have not predicted the problems we're currently having with AI. They had decades to think about it. Did any of them predict that people would be using it to cheat on homework, create scams, disrupt social media with spam and terribly off-putting fake images, publish books and songs nobody wrote and nobody wants, all while using obscene amounts of energy? The world doesn't seem more futuristic or in any danger of getting wiped out by some autonomous AI thing that's been given access to nukes, both typical major themes. The world to me just feels more empty and boring. It's just a new tool hucksters can use to defraud people.

Some of the other things the tech oligarchs are pursuing are also cliche themes of science fiction: space exploration, the metaverse, the meta glasses, Musk's Neuralink. So if AI did not turn out as expected, how's the rest of this stuff gonna work out?

Did anyone expect that? Like, there was enough different thinkers, and takes, that somebody probably suggested it.

Usually, people gravitated in the opposite direction, though: To be smart, an algorithm has to be beautiful and profound and sublime.

In "A New Hope" after R5 explodes he tells Luke they should purchase R2D2. Luke and Uncle Owen could have picked any replacement droid, but C3PO advises them to pick R2D2.

In Return of the Jedi 3PO is gifted to Jabba the Hutt by Skywalker who uses him as a translation slave for a while. 3PO provides accurate translations for Jabba from what we can see.

Speaks to the Ewoks and gets them to help the rebels.

In Return of the Jedi, he communicates with the Ewoks, ultimately enlisting them against the Empire, probably the most he actually "did."

He translates R2 for Luke which is how he finds out he's carrying the secret message.

They do have the Holonet which seems to be a sort of amalgamation of media including information that can be looked up.

In Legends canon, droid sapience was accidental. It was the result of a worm that infected droid brains, and was passed wirelessly via shortband communication frequencies. Once it escaped into the wild, there really was no stopping it since by that point it was self-writing and evolving, like a real infectious disease. Wiping droids' memories regularly is supposed to prevent personalities from forming.

Every droid can develop a personality if you leave them alone long enough. R2 is one of the rare droids in the canon that has never had his memory wiped. Ever. Obi-Wan had 3PO wiped because he's shit at keeping a secret, but R2 knows how to keep his trap shut.

I can't remember which book it was, but R2 was reminiscing about his life experiences with I think BB-8. Talking about how he feels like it's his duty to be an observer. A recorder, someone who's close to history shaping events, and will always remember the moments that made the future. Which I think was cool.

From a SF perspective, droids are universally shittily written throughout the franchise:

You have robots that are completely intelligent and self aware and can do any job and they just sort exists side-by-side with humans as helpers without having any significant impact on the economy or asking for rights.

I know there are droid rebellions somewhere in the lore, but droids are assiduously unstudied on film.