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John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

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Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#101

Post by darkwater »

echelon wrote: post #96
moss2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a tool, it's a wedge to break indoctrination and overcome bias. It leads to more pragmatic and less ideological thinking. The subject is compelled to contrast opposing views and consider the merits of each. Any use by ideological groups twists the purpose of the phrase on its head. The quote encourages thinking and consideration. You'd have to turn off your brain for this to have the opposite effect.

> Any use by ideological groups twists the purpose of the phrase on its head. The quote encourages thinking and consideration. You'd have to turn off your brain for this to have the opposite effect.

Well, it would not be too surprising that it can be used to, for example, make people think that they can trust science and also believe in some almighty, unexplainable by science divine entity.

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#102

Post by ykonstant »

nadam wrote: post #41
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that, 2D games (side-scrolling platformers were not a thing on PC hardware until Carmack did it, iirc). I think his main thing is balancing clarity - what happens when and in what order - with maintainability. Compare this with enterprise software, which is orders of magnitude more complex than video games in terms of business logic (the complexity in video games is in performance optimization), but whose…

"compare this with enterprise software, which is orders of magnitude more complex than video games in terms of business logic" Maybe this was true 20 years ago, but I do not think this is true today. Game code of some games is almost as complex as enterprise software or even more complex in some cases (think of grand strategy games like Civilization or Paradox games). The difference is that it still needs to be perfo…

I have heard modern game development compared to OS development in terms of complexity and I think that comparison is quite apt; especially when the game involves intricate graphics and complicated networking involving multiple time scales as you say.

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#103

Post by orf »

gorgoiler wrote: post #3

> Inlining functions also has the benefit of not making it possible to call the function from other places. I’ve really gone to town with this in Python. def parse_news_email(…): def parse_link(…): … def parse_subjet(…): … … If you are careful, you can rely on the outer function’s variables being available inside the inner functions as well. Something like a logger or a db connection can be passed in once and then us…

That’s gonna be quite expensive, don’t do this in hot loops. You’re re-defining and re-creating the function object each time the outer function is called.

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#104

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

echelon wrote: post #96
moss2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a tool, it's a wedge to break indoctrination and overcome bias. It leads to more pragmatic and less ideological thinking. The subject is compelled to contrast opposing views and consider the merits of each. Any use by ideological groups twists the purpose of the phrase on its head. The quote encourages thinking and consideration. You'd have to turn off your brain for this to have the opposite effect.

The US has a statutory rapist and someone who believes in active weather manipulation seated in Congress. It's easy to get the masses to turn off their brains.

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#105

Post by desdenova »

darkwater wrote: post #101
echelon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a tool, it's a wedge to break indoctrination and overcome bias. It leads to more pragmatic and less ideological thinking. The subject is compelled to contrast opposing views and consider the merits of each. Any use by ideological groups twists the purpose of the phrase on its head. The quote encourages thinking and consideration. You'd have to turn off your brain for this to have the opposite effect.

> Any use by ideological groups twists the purpose of the phrase on its head. The quote encourages thinking and consideration. You'd have to turn off your brain for this to have the opposite effect. Well, it would not be too surprising that it can be used to, for example, make people think that they can trust science and also believe in some almighty, unexplainable by science divine entity.

You can trust science, but science doesn't cover all of reality.

My imaginary friend does, buy my magic book.

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#106

Post by thelastparadise »

whstl wrote: post #39
kolinko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bumped into that issue, and it caused a lot of friction between me and 3 young developers I had to manage. Ideas on how to overcome that?

Teaching. I had this problem with an overzealous junior developer and the solution was showing some different perspectives. For example John Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design.

I tried this but they just come back with retorts like "OK boomer" which tends to make the situation even worse.

How do you respond to that?

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#107

Post by zelphirkalt »

gorgoiler wrote: post #3

> Inlining functions also has the benefit of not making it possible to call the function from other places. I’ve really gone to town with this in Python. def parse_news_email(…): def parse_link(…): … def parse_subjet(…): … … If you are careful, you can rely on the outer function’s variables being available inside the inner functions as well. Something like a logger or a db connection can be passed in once and then us…

Where is the part, where this is "careful"? This is just how scopes work. I don't see what is special about the inner functions using things in the scope of the outer functions.

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#108

Post by hibernator149 »

mihaic wrote: post #2

When I first heard the maxim that an intelligent person should be able to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, I was naive to think it meant weighing them for pros and cons. Over time I realized that it means balancing contradictory actions, and the main purpose of experience is knowing when to apply each. Concretely related to the topic, I've often found myself inlining short pieces of one-time code that mad…

Wait, isn't that just Doublethink from 1984? Holding two opposing thoughts is a sign that your mental model of the world is wrong and that it needs to be fixed. Where have you heard that maxim?

Re: John Carmack on inlined code (2014)

#110

Post by cbrozefsky »

thelastparadise wrote: post #106
whstl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching. I had this problem with an overzealous junior developer and the solution was showing some different perspectives. For example John Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design.

I tried this but they just come back with retorts like "OK boomer" which tends to make the situation even worse. How do you respond to that?

Fire them.
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