"Yeah, it has to be bot-producible."

"By the way, have you ever tested that? Are bot-made things not tinker-cursed?"

"I avoid having them make much," she says. "For reasons. I don't think so, though, based on very small tests."

"You don't think they're tinker-cursed or you don't think they're not?"

"I think they are not cursed. The bots don't run on instinct the way I do; which means the prototype doesn't always work because I'll have an instinct mid-build and they go with the original design; but if it works so will the next one and they don't seem to - draw on my power as much, when I maintain stuff they made."

"Oh, that's... interesting. And very, very exploitable."

"Yep."

"Do they have to come up with the design, or can they just do something you designed, or a compromise...?"

"They can do my simple designs. The complicated ones seem to work only with instinct operative during the build."

"...simple? What counts as simple, even?" he laughs.

She giggles. "No, well, Tinker bullshit. It's good at tools, custom welders and stuff! It can take my pseudocode flowcharts and turn them into bug-free programs."

"Does it use the same programming language you do?"

"Yeah, although it can convert things into standard ones long as they're Turing-complete and meet one or two other criteria. Nasty efficiency cost, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for compatibility."

"Or human readability in some cases."

"That would only apply if I were open-sourcing, which I approve of philosophically but have a hard time with practically being a Tinker and not a regular engineer."

"Yeah. At some point I kinda wanna see if I can even begin to wrap my head around it."

"Do you even know any programming?"

"Basic concepts? Some computability theory and stuff, math is fun, no actual languages."

"Well, you can have a look if you want but I don't think on that background you'll get anywhere."

"Would I get anywhere if I learned anything? Like, say, Java, or something."

"It'd give you a loose idea of what various operators are likely to be."

"I might do that for fun, then. Shouldn't be hard."

"Enjoy."

"I probably will! I don't suppose you have any pointers?"

"Not really, I never conventionally studied the stuff."