I didn’t dismiss the point. My next sentence that you left out of that quote addresses it ;)
I also learn concepts bottom up, but thank God everyone isn’t like me. I’m just glad prebuilt tools like the game engines we have today exist so we can have artists creating awesome games.
Heck, even half life likely wouldn’t exist if Carmack hadn’t written the Quake engine and shared it with the Valve developers![0] Think of all the amazing games that have since been released by Valve that might never have been unless they had the kickstart that they got.
The fact that it’s a game that was developed by people that were self-proclaimed “non-coders”[0] using a plug n’ play game engine Stencyl (a no code engine) and then later switching to Unity. It seems to me the plug n’ play nature enabled them to gain traction with a prototype that led to the full fledged game.
This one quote on page 2 from the developers really hammers home this point:
> Those limitations aside, working in Stencyl has been fantastic. Ideas come together really easily and the tools are all intuitive. We definitely couldn't have come so far in such a short amount of time without it.
That’s completely besides the point. I agree that working on an engine can be very fulfilling and round you out as a developer. But it’s not easy and I wouldn’t recommend that somebody who just wants to make a game go down that path. I’m pretty sure some of my favorite games like Hollow Knight would have never been made if they decided to just build the engine as well.
You seem to be very intent on insisting that anyone can make a game engine (which I mostly agree with). But, it’s not easy, even when you use a pre-existing framework like Raylib. I’ve used frameworks like Monogame, I’ve used bare metal C++ and OpenGL, I’ve used the HTML canvas and JavaScript, I’ve built physics engines and used physics engines like Box2D or Havok. What I’m trying to say is I’ve done a lot of game engine-y stuff at various levels of the stack.
I’ve _also_ used Godot, Unity and Unreal. There’s a tremendous difference. I just started learning Godot a week ago and I already have the core game loop practically done in a new RPG. Sure I could’ve done the same thing using C++ and OpenGL (or Raylib or something), but I would be missing out on a lot of useful things that _just work_. Godot’s BBCode text labels are amazing and give my dialogue boxes a whole bunch of character out of the box. The tilemap editor allows me to just build my levels without having to build an editor first. The lighting system can add a ton of visual polish with very little effort on my part.
I’ve also dabbled in VR games with Unreal. And I’ve tried making some simple 3D games in Unity. Is this all possible without those engines? Yea. Would I have been able to experiment with the kinds of tech I got to play with if I made it all myself from scratch? I doubt it (not because I couldn’t do it, I just don’t have the time).
Another thing to consider is porting your game to different platforms! There’s a whole lot of variability in what kind of support you’ll get for that with something you made yourself or a framework like Raylib.
Anyways, from someone who has experienced both sides of the coin, you’ll end up fighting with the engine either way ;) There’s nothing wrong with using a general purpose engine.
They do know the difference[0][1][2]. I feel like gamers are notorious for complaining about fidelity issues and frame rate issues. I’m not sure why you would think they don’t understand the difference. The reason people complain about switch frame rates is because it’s often low fidelity games that still can’t hit a consistent 60 FPS.
I didn’t mention this, because it doesn’t matter. I use an iPhone. I’m writing this on an iPhone. I use a MacBook. Why the heck should I care about my friends and family paying some “Apple status” fee to get an iPhone just so I can share pictures and videos with them?
> iPhone users mostly just want android users to get iphones. Doesn't matter why.
This is anecdotal. Where is the data proclaiming this? I’ve never personally met somebody that cares what brand of phone you have.
And I guess it should also be said, I don’t use drugs or anything. I just want to be able to message friends and family without pointless restrictions. I don’t know where you’re getting these ideas from.
Nobody I know in the US uses WhatsApp. This has been repeated ad nauseam in other comments. I don’t know why this is, but in the US people tend to use the default message apps on their phones to text each other.
The only other app that I’ve seen used in several places is GroupMe, but that’s typically reserved for large groups (more than 10 people or so) that may include people you’re not friends with, but more acquaintances. So it’s been used for school classes, community groups, and things like that.
Me and my friends don’t care about green vs blue bubbles or any of that garbage. We just want to be able to communicate over the paid cellular plan that we already have. What happens in Europe has no bearing on this. All I pointed out by my comment above is that this is a problem and there are people that would like a solution.
And, not that this matters, I’m writing this on my iPhone. But, this is still an annoying problem to me because much of my family and some of my friends use android. Apple degrades my experience with family and friends for no technical reason. The only reason they do this, presumably, is to retain a large market share and promote some stupid “exclusivity” ideal that appeals to some people.
It’s false based on what? Your own anecdotal experience? I have a friend group that has iPhones and Androids. We went on vacation and had to jump through so many hoops just to share our pictures. We don’t care what devices everybody uses, because why the heck should that matter?
The fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity pictures and videos, but it isn’t just because Apple wants their walled garden benefits nobody but Apple. So your claim that this is laughably false is easily refuted by my anecdotal evidence.
People that are friends or family with differing devices do exist. I know, it’s shocking. And it would be nice to have something as simple as messaging just work without all these stupid UX downgrades for no reason at all.
> So he puts polymorphic function calls into enormous loops to simulate a heavy load with a huge amount of data to conclude "we have 20x loss in performance everywhere"?
You're mistaken, the load size has nothing to do with the end result. The result is normalized to give an estimate of how much faster the simple code is than the polymorphic code irregardless of input size. (Kinda like deaths per 100k instead of giving an absolute number of deaths for statistics about diseases).
So yes, your code is running 20x slower than it should be all the time.
Especially when you make every class an interface, with... get this, one implementation! This is based on real world experience and is not a joke. There are real companies with real people that write real code where every single class is an interface with exactly one implementation. Which, as Casey has shown, results in upwards of a 20x slowdown in the worst case.
Obviously, you probably won't get a 20x speedup by getting rid of the polymorphic garbage. But it's equally asinine to assume that polymorphic functions are only called a few hundred times. I guarantee you your PC is making millions of polymorphic function calls per minute between: the OS, the browser, windows Anti-Malware scanner, steam running in the background, oracle running its checks to remind you to update Java, etc. There are hundreds of processes running all the time on a modern device, these devices are wasting enormous amounts of resources.
> The right wing in the US is so pathologically sociopathic that they actually glorify assholes for rolling coal on bicyclists as heroes, and think it's hilariously funny.
Or, you know, perhaps the articles that make money based off of clickbaiting people with outrageous premises that make people mad are not indicative of the vast majority of people. I find that when I talk to people, you know face to face in person, we usually agree on 90% of topics regardless of which side of the aisle you fall on.
The internet and social media thrives on labeling your in-group as the heroes and your out-group as racist, homophobic bigots (left and right). I really hate this mentality because it paints a broad stroke on a whole lot of people that are not crazy and holding radical ideas.
I would hope on HN I could expect the average commenter to be able to realize this and recognize that there's a lot more commonality than social media and news media would like us to believe. And that the average HN commenter wouldn't resort to automatically pointing a finger at their out-group and casting all social woes and responsibility on them. There are jerks on both sides of the aisle. There are great people on both sides of the aisle.
And just as an example, here's Chris Cuomo bullying a bicyclist[0]. I'm sure there are others on the left like this as well, but I'm not going to automatically assume that somebody on the left hate or loves bicyclists. I don't know that because we're all individuals and make our own decisions at the end of the day.
Reiterating the same argument in screaming case doesn't bolster your argument. It feels like the internet equivalent of a real life debate where a debater thinks saying the same thing LOUDER makes a better argument.
> - You write one test
Easier said than done. Say your task is to create a low level audio mixer which is something you've never done before. Where do you even begin? That's the hard part.
Some other commenters here have pointed out that exploratory code is different from TDD code, which is a much better argument then what you made here imo.
> I don't want this to come off the wrong way but what you're describing shows you are severely misinformed about what TDD actually is or you're just making assumptions about something based on its name and nothing else.
Instead of questioning the OP's qualifications, perhaps you should hold a slightly less dogmatic opinion. Perhaps OP is familiar with this style of development, and they've run into problem firsthand when they've tried to write tests for an unknown problem domain.
> I mean even at Google (on a different team) I was a "technical lead" in my 20s, and let me tell you, I had noooo business leading anything technical of any importance. But this is very common! We would never accept this in other fields. Would you live in a house built entirely by junior carpenters in their late 20s who built one or two houses that barely stood up? Would you drive cars designed and built by junior engineers?
I find this kind of funny, because this is what happens right? I was under the assumption that architects typically design the building plans and do all the engineering, and a construction crew (which can consist of people mainly in their 20s) will build those plans under the supervision of the lead engineers/architects.
So, in the same way that many senior software engineers don't write much code, don't architects/civil engineers typically refrain from using power tools to build the actual building? If this is the case, then software engineering is very akin to other engineering disciplines in this regard.
I feel like the author of this tweet is conflating craftsmen with senior leads. A craftsmen is somebody I would expect to have been working with the medium for 10+ years, and continues honing their craft throughout the years. Whereas engineers and architects are typically more concerned with the abstract ideas and overall outcome. An engineer/architect can be a craftsman, but I don't believe they need to be synonymous.