magic_lobster_party

I don’t really know how to describe him. I guess Casey is proof that one can be skilled in programming, but still have a fundamental lack of understanding in software engineering.

This is just so wrong. He’s too nostalgic of the Amiga days.

First, he has no concrete proof that many lines of code is bad. He’s just saying “I feel like things are worse now and here’s a graph that correlates with my feelings”.

And then he shows a graph of the number of lines in the Linux kernel. Yeah, Linux grew in size mid 90s because that was when people wanted to make it work on computers other than Torvald’s own!

Secondly, no one wants to plug in an USB and grant whatever is in it full machine access. It’s a major security concern, and people want multitasking. What if I want to listen to Spotify while I play my game?

The USB thing is likely not going to work either way because it can’t take into account for all possible configurations. Too bad, this program doesn’t recognize your specific WiFi card. You have to survive without internet.

Unless someone manages to perfectly standardize everything that can possibly happen in a computer. That ain’t going to happen.

When they started with episode 3 they’ve already worked on Half Life 2 for more than 8 years. Most good ideas had already been explored, and they struggled to come up with new ones.

At that point it’s easier to start with something fresh where they’re not confined with the expectations of what a Half Life 2 should be.

Some that come into my mind:

Sekiro Devil May Cry 1 & 3 Wonderful 101 Armored Core 6

I think these games are better on the subsequent playthroughs. Sekiro also has that itch no other game is able to scratch.

I think it shows that Valve has built a strong culture for creativity that’s hard to replicate. Their approach to play testing. The “flat” company structure.

What’s evident from the HL2 documentary is that there’s no single mastermind behind the game. There’s no Hideo Kojima or Will Wright. It’s the creative output of many individuals.

I watched the full documentary now. It’s clear they were burned out of Half Life when they started with Episode 3. The idea to deliver a new episode every 12 months wasn’t creatively sustainable. So they put it on hold while they worked on L4D and other projects.

They hoped the episodic delivery of games would be the future. Especially alongside a digital distribution platform like Steam. I suspect they realized episodes wasn’t the way after the release of Orange Box, so they moved on from that.

Are people forgetting his Dijon Mustard scandal? Unforgivable.

Do you know why?

TAOCP is a misleading title. It shouldn’t be computer programming. It should be computer science.

For most people, programming is the engineering discipline. I think that’s a very different art form. Software engineers are rarely dealing with the type of problems TAOCP is concerned about.

Optimizing CPU usage by 0.02% is something only the truly deranged do