A few people shooting the shit in some Swedish town will not amount to anything. It's a sneeze in a hurricane.
A software conference that advocates for quality
151–160 of 160 posts
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do we want software to be more complex? No but the complexity of software should follow from the complexity of end user features. Essential vs accidental complexity. Some problems are complex, they require complex software. Some problems are simple, so the software should be simple. In an ideal world, at least. > However, it might make it easier? Isn't easy really important in some domains? Indeed, this is maybe a…
> .. [I]t is not at all about performance, but performance is the canary in the coalmine: it is a direct translation of the essential vs accidental complexity problem. This is all nice color on my commentary, but it fails to address the point of my two parent comments: programming is an economic activity . Sometimes a putatively more complex solution is the "right" solution for someone else, because it is easier to u…
> This is all nice color on my commentary, but it fails to address the point of my two parent comments: programming is an economic activity
I've mentioned the economics multiple times now, while you're still hung up on performance, I'm not sure why. Again, performance is an indicator of a perceived deeper underlying problem. The underlying problem is not performance, though that's the surface level gripe that is mentioned. There is no part of the argument that advocates you should redesign a specific piece of software to be faster. Rather, the argument is that our collective ability to make good software is deteriorating.
The underlying problem is nebulous and hard to catch and prove because it is hard to reason objectively about a real program in relation to hypothetical other programs that could compete with it. This makes the Muratori/Blow argument similarly nebulous and their (intentional or not) judgmental attitude does not help in the communication. I am aware that this argument is not iron clad or even clear or that the judgmental attitude is in any way warranted.
So, why does it even make sense to talk about this then? Because if there is an alternate universe where we can actually solve the same problems with vastly simpler logical structures, we should strive to make that reality precisely because of the economics, because simpler logical structures beat the pants off complexity in terms of predictability, investment, ROI, etc.
So to summarize, this is the argument (as I perceive it):
1. lots of software is slowing down over time, e.g: same problem is solved with more resources
2. More resources means not just waiting for stuff to be done, but likely also more complexity (resources are spent doing something, hence there is more to be done, hence more complexity).
3. If the same problems are solved by involving increasingly more complex software over time, there is a likelihood that we are writing software (even new software) in a more complex way than necessary, and that its getting worse over time.
4. We should figure out if that observation is true, and what we can do about it, before the cost of building software (economics) becomes prohibitive. (e.g dramatized as the collapse of civilization)
A lot of assumptions are made in 1 and 2.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
>At no point in time did they accurately perceive what they had or what they lost, even at the point of bankruptcy. This is traditionally not only with software, but other kinds of companies too. Some people are just not quality people. At this conference there's a presentation encouraging "You should finish your software." If that's all people did that would be 10x better right there.
We are getting to the point where people don’t even do the “make it right” part of Make it Work, Make it Right, Make it Fast. It’s making it tough to push for the latter when you can’t even get Right out of some people.
Why make it right if I have an easier life and get paid more if I don’t?
In this industry the only thing that matters is money and people have adjusted accordingly.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of alternative software needs that do not need to be AI based nor do they need to change tactics due to the current obsession with AI.
If you know of any that are in need of an engineer, let me know. Every single executive I’ve talked to in the last 4 years is all “How can I use AI with this?”
I will keep an ear out and let you know. I primarily hear of engineering positions on software where stability is key due to the industry I focus on (Science, Engineering, Research). They are the industries where you have to plan long-term to keep the max compatibility and ease of use. Adding in AI features could be useful, however if it damages the key functionality it is simply not worth the risk. It is still the case with some new software that is being built for new equipment.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#155I'm disillusioned because it never happens, but purveyors of conferences and books are happy to sell the promised land™ of how "it's really going to be different this time." Processes, tools, and diligence vigilantly seem the most apparent path. Perhaps rehash the 50 year old debate of professionalization while AI vibes coding is barking at the door, because what could possibly go wrong with even less experience doin…
It doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job. If you want to do that on your own time, that's fine - but the purpose of a job is economic. Of course you should write software of some reasonable quality, but optimizations have diminishing economic returns. Eventually, the returns are lower than the cost (in time, money, etc) of further optimizing, and this break-ev…
> It doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job.
You made a reductive, declarative, omniscient value judgement that is patently false. Managers just want to have the right buzzwords, the biggest budgets, and the coolest projects. (We won't point out that they have pointy hair.)
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#156I'm disillusioned because it never happens, but purveyors of conferences and books are happy to sell the promised land™ of how "it's really going to be different this time." Processes, tools, and diligence vigilantly seem the most apparent path. Perhaps rehash the 50 year old debate of professionalization while AI vibes coding is barking at the door, because what could possibly go wrong with even less experience doin…
It happens when an ex-engineer is in a leadership position. The results are good, but it’s typically a small part of having a successful company. However, you should want to build quality software because building quality things is fulfilling. Unfortunately certain systems have made the worship of money the end all be all of human experience.
The cult of morbid wealth slithered into the minds of people who have little or no money yet see themselves as temporarily-embarrassed, future billionaires because they work at one of the corporations as a peon or see billionaires on TV.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've seen, they are very much in a game developer mindset: you want to make a finished product for a specific use, you want that product to be very well received for your users, and you want it to run really fast on their hardware. When you're done with it, your next product will likely be 80% new code, so long term maintainabity is not a major concern. And stability is important, but not critical - and the…
One of the slides in Blow's talk about why he was starting work on Jai said, "If we spend a lot of time wading through high-friction environments, we had better be sure that this is a net win. Empirically, it looks to me like [that] does not usually pay off. These methods spend more time preventing potential bugs than it would have taken to fix the actual bugs that happen." I think that's an overall good summary of t…
Undoubtedly? Modern video games are pretty good, and there's a lot of them. They're mostly written in mainstream programming environments. I don't see without explanation how the take is undoubtedly correct in that context.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the slides in Blow's talk about why he was starting work on Jai said, "If we spend a lot of time wading through high-friction environments, we had better be sure that this is a net win. Empirically, it looks to me like [that] does not usually pay off. These methods spend more time preventing potential bugs than it would have taken to fix the actual bugs that happen." I think that's an overall good summary of t…
Undoubtedly? Modern video games are pretty good, and there's a lot of them. They're mostly written in mainstream programming environments. I don't see without explanation how the take is undoubtedly correct in that context.
Fortunately, well-respected game programmers like Muratori and Blow, who have written games that are more highly regarded by critics than BAC Skywalk and who also have more experience than you do, have spent thousands of hours providing that explanation. If you aren't going to listen when they explain it, you aren't going to listen to me either.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Undoubtedly? Modern video games are pretty good, and there's a lot of them. They're mostly written in mainstream programming environments. I don't see without explanation how the take is undoubtedly correct in that context.
Fortunately, well-respected game programmers like Muratori and Blow, who have written games that are more highly regarded by critics than BAC Skywalk and who also have more experience than you do, have spent thousands of hours providing that explanation. If you aren't going to listen when they explain it, you aren't going to listen to me either.
Thanks for checking out my portfolio! I have to admit, it's a bit out of date, but I also don't think that my background in games matters all that much in any specifics. I can talk to principles.
To try and understand where you're coming from, I'll make a few notes and you can tell me where you agree or disagree.
I think we'll both agree that Rust is probably not suitable for most parts of game development. Rust, while enabling "bug-free" refactoring with it's expressive type system, also imposes that type system when you don't want it. Oftentimes, when tweaking a game, you'd rather try things out in a state where things could break than be forced to finish the refactor every time, and Rust doesn't have particularly ergonomic escape hatches for that. If there are specific components with well defined inputs and outputs for your use case (say, maybe, an input system, or a rollback netcode engine), then I think Rust could be a good choice, but you'd also be paying when interfacing with whatever other tools you're using.
I think we'll possibly disagree with the idea that games need to be fast. They need to be fast enough to work! A stable 60fps is pretty much table stakes nowadays too, even in genres that don't benefit hugely from such low latency, in terms of player perception. But "fast enough" is a different bar in different contexts. Mario is fun, and in 2025 I would not need to put much effort in at all to make Mario fast enough in ~any context someone will play it in. On the other hand, I'd probably have to put a lot of work into a photorealistic open world RPG, or an RTS with tens of thousands of units. Many games live in between those two, and oftentimes there's reason to optimise some parts and not others. If a game runs at 60fps on a 5-year-old Android phone, which can often be achieved with Unity (modulo garbage collection hitches), I'm not going to spend extra effort optimising further.
Where I probably disagree most is that we currently err too far on the side of correctness. One thing you didn't note (and I'm not sure if Muratori or Blow talk to) is the difficulty in finding bugs. Games are a massive ball of mutable state and operations on it, and games are usually massively wide artifacts, played on a huge variety of target devices, that are hard-to-impossible to cover the full state space of. Bugs are often non-trivial to see when writing, see when testing, or notice if a reversion exposes them. If I were to guess, I've seen more time spent on resolving bugs than from writing features, from me and the devs I've worked with in my career.
I think in the iron-triangle-esque trade between "easy to write more game", "hard to write bugs", and "game runs fast", I personally bias towards the first two. Few games _need_ the latter, fewer still need it everywhere in the game. Scripting languages and higher-level langs like a C# are pretty ergonomic for games (and the latter specifically, outside the Unity context, is pretty good in terms of optimisation capabilites too).
I'm unsure what made you think that I'd be unlikely to want to listen or discuss things with you, so if you do have notes there I'd be happy to hear them too.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately, well-respected game programmers like Muratori and Blow, who have written games that are more highly regarded by critics than BAC Skywalk and who also have more experience than you do, have spent thousands of hours providing that explanation. If you aren't going to listen when they explain it, you aren't going to listen to me either.
Thanks for checking out my portfolio! I have to admit, it's a bit out of date, but I also don't think that my background in games matters all that much in any specifics. I can talk to principles. To try and understand where you're coming from, I'll make a few notes and you can tell me where you agree or disagree. I think we'll both agree that Rust is probably not suitable for most parts of game development. Rust, whi…
Interesting and thought-provoking.
I don't think Rust is mainstream enough to be what they were attacking, especially 6 years ago or whenever Blow gave that talk. Unity certainly is, and they seem to reserve special scorn for it, maybe because it's so popular.
I don't agree that it's easy to make Mario hit a stable 60fps in any popular gaming environment. In the browser, it's easy to hit 60fps but impossible to keep it stable. And, as you concede, it can be challenging with Unity (or Godot).
Latency is a separate issue from fps, even when the fps isn't janky. With your PC plugged into a Smart TV, you can hit a stable 60fps, but typically with two or even three frames of lag from the TV, which is a very noticeable downgrade from a 6510-based Nintendo connected to an RF modulator and a CRT TV from 01979. And often the OS adds more! Three 60fps frames of lag is 50ms. The one-way network latency from New York to London is 35ms. Most players won't be able to identify that there's a problem, but they will reliably perform more poorly and enjoy the game less.
I'm skeptical of the Muratori crowd's implicit assertion that this kind of responsivity is inherently something that requires the game developer to understand the whole technology stack from SPIR-V up. I think that's a design problem in current operating systems, where it definitely does exist. And, while I'm skeptical of their dismissal of the importance of bugs, I'm confident that they're representing their own needs as accurately as they can.
But probably it's better for you to engage with their explanation of their own ideas than with mine. I might be misunderstanding them, and I don't have their experience.