This is the biggest lie of all. Programmers have spent untold billions of man-years writing about code, how to write it faster, better, prettier, etc. and at the end of the day, it's not that significant. Code is ephemeral and has no real intrinsic value. The algorithms certainly do, sure. But the code itself isn't worth all this time (and shelf space! – have you seen how many books there are on UML diagrams?). The code, the performance and the features hinge on one thing – the data. Bad data equals slow and crappy application. Writing a good engine means first and foremost, understanding the data.
This is the biggest lie of all. Programmers have spent untold billions of man-years writing about code, how to write it faster, better, prettier, etc. and at the end of the day, it's not that significant. Code is ephemeral and has no real intrinsic value. The algorithms certainly do, sure. But the code itself isn't worth all this time (and shelf space! – have you seen how many books there are on UML diagrams?). The code, the performance and the features hinge on one thing – the data. Bad data equals slow and crappy application. Writing a good engine means first and foremost, understanding the data.
http://www.insomniacgames.com/three-big-lies/