Leareth manages almost two candlemarks of language practice before his concentration starts to waver; it's surprising how easy it feels to just keep doing this for long periods of time. (The tutorial is very well designed, moreso than almost any learning experience Leareth has ever had.) 

Eventually, after ten minutes of half falling asleep in his blanket nest, he manages to drag himself over to the sofa and tries to navigate to the search engine and painstakingly type in 'dog names'. 

Apparently the broad categories are "people names", "nouns and adjectives", "book references" (this has substantial overlap with "people names"), and just things that sound neat. Apparently the most common dog names are "Sidekick", "Robot", "Flower", and "Un-un-dog*", but the website indicates that it's compiling these facts so you can avoid those names.

*This is a double application of a negation transform applied to the vowels in the word for "dog", which in this case means that the dog is not a dog-themed fantasy creature that is itself an "undog".

Ooh, what's a 'robot', Leareth has not encountered this word yet and can't guess based on similarity to other words. He painstakingly goes back to the search screen and re-types 'robot'. 

A robot is a machine that does things it is programmed to do automatically! The most common kinds of robots around here are vacuums and mops, on the consumer end, but there are lots of industrial robots and the field is very popular.

Leareth slowly and effortfully puzzles through the explanation, recognizing or having good guesses for the meaning of about three-quarteres of the words, and then: what????????? 

...On reflection that's maybe an obvious related field to whatever not-magic makes the 'laptop' work. Which Leareth is suddenly desperately curious about! 

Through some further poking at menus and effortfully deciphering the text for various options, he manages to figure out the copy and paste function, and how to open additional tabs of the search field, and he starts copying in every word he doesn't recognize. What does 'programmed' mean? (He can mostly guess from context but he wants implementation details.)

Here is "PROGRAMMING: DEMYSTIFIED" if he would like to read that! It explains the basic underlying concepts of programming and how they connect to the functions a lay computer user encounters.

This is full of words he doesn't know and Leareth rapidly ends up with a really unwieldy number of additional tabs open with words he doesn't recognize pasted into search, but he is nonetheless utterly captivated! 

When Melody eventually comes to prod him about eating dinner, he's puzzled his way through the explainer and managed to find a very basic programming tutorial and is attempting - with much less success, and mounting frustration - to follow the instructions provided on how to 'download' 'software' and obtain a 'code editor'. The tutorial has pictures included, which helps, but he's definitely struggling well past the limits of both his language comprehension and computer-use skills. 

He does not even slightly notice Melody approaching. 

Melody blinks. Waves her hand in front of him and fails to get a response. Sighs, and peers over his shoulder. 

:Gods! What are you doing?: 

:I am trying to learn how to do 'programming'! It is what makes this laptop work and do all the things it does. Also you can use it to make animated mops and machines that do work in factories and things like that: 

Melody can't help smiling. :Of course you are. How did you even manage to figure out that was a thing? Was it in the language tutorial?: 

:No! I was looking at dog names: 

:.......Please tell me you're not going to name your dog 'programming': 

- oh, right, speaking of his dog, Leareth has been completely neglecting and ignoring 448 for candlemarks. Does she seem all right? 

She is asleep on his feet.

Oh good. 

"We should feed her if the dog food is here," Leareth says tiredly. "And let her outside to relieve herself before she does it in the house. ...Can you do it, I am sort of busy with this." 

Melody rolls her eyes. She tries to do it discreetly even though Leareth is way too occupied looking at the laptop screen to notice. "Actually, you need to eat dinner. Also you seem pretty frustrated so it's maybe a good time to take a break and come back to it?" 

"If I take a break now I am going to forget where I left off! I can come in ten minutes." 

This is a stupid argument. "Fine. I'll go make us something to eat. Soup made with boiling water sound good to you?" 

Leareth makes a mmhmm noise in acknowledgement and keeps trying to hunt down where his 'installer' 'package' went after he clicked the button to 'download' it. 

When Melody comes back to collect him, he is curled up crying from frustration, with the laptop abandoned on the other half of the sofa. 

SEE this is why Leareth should LISTEN to his MINDHEALER about when he clearly needs to take a BREAK.

Melody allows herself five seconds of frustration about this, and then sighs and moves the laptop so she can sit down next to him and try to untangle what he's upset about. 

- wow! She has no idea how to fix that! 

It feels like a really annoying thing to bother Dree about, but Melody can't think of any other options. She reaches out with a Mindtouch, effortfully given the distance. :Dree? Is now a fine time to interrupt?: 

Dree is herself having dinner but she can telepathy and eat dinner at the same time! :What's up?:

:Um. Leareth is really upset because - I'm probably going to explain this wrong, sorry, he's not being very clear and I have no idea what any of the words mean - he was trying to do a 'programming tutorial' and 'downloaded' some 'software' and then was trying to, er, 'import a library' - what does that even mean - and he thinks he did a different thing instead and now the 'code editor' isn't working. I do not have the faintest idea how to fix this problem but it's causing him a lot of distress: 

:...I think the usual advice for that is to stop trying to program for a while, and come back to it when you're feeling calmer, and maybe get someone who knows how it works to help:

:That's good advice but I told him to stop it ten minutes ago and he didn't listen! ...Er, do you know anyone who would know how it works and might be willing to come here tomorrow and untangle it for him? I'm worried it would take him ten hours to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it because he barely reads your language and I am honestly not sure how he managed to do this much: