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Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

arstechnica.com

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Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#351

Post by DashAnimal »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #187
torginus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political? The most political I've seen him get was when he spoke out against the idea of accepting technical compromises for the sake of not hurting people's feelings and being PC. As in, you get to be cranky as long as you're arguing for the highest quality solution

Jonathan Blow is one of my personal heroes, but he does seem to be living 5 years behind politically (he spends a lot of time ranting at the woke crowd, who seem nowhere to be found anymore anyways). That's probably a good thing. I doubt he's as addicted to the internet as the rest of us. He's said some odd things in interviews in the last couple years though. I wanted to substantiate this, but I couldn't find the cl…

He is definitely "online". I saw him tweet about Hasan's dog which - you have to know about streaming political figures and the latest happenings at least a little bit. Maybe not addicted but he knows what is up and still has the views he has.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#352

Post by koolala »

sxzygz wrote: post #2

In case you assume novelty, a comment [1] from ArsTechnica reader Jensen404 explains otherwise by linking to [2] a post on Bluesky. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spe... [2] https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qybidq7...

The core idea of the witness wasn't novel either. The novelty was how far they went with it.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#354

Post by LexiMax »

torginus wrote: post #325
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Politics imo is the worst sort of tribalism No it's not. Politics is the negotiation between two or more people who want conflicting outcomes. > they might disagree on what the important issues are, or what should be done about them, but thankfully that doesn't necessarily stop them from being the best of friends. The Republicans are led by white supremacists and they hate me for being transgender. Please stop carr…

I am not from the US. I don't have a horse in this race. Please do not imply I am somehow 'carrying water' for the Republicans, whatever might that mean. I do not have any negative feelings toward you for who you are, and I assume you're a competent individual, although I would prefer if we were having a technical debate instead of whatever this is. I apologize if I come across as impolite, but I assure you that has…

> Please do not imply I am somehow 'carrying water' for the Republicans, whatever might that mean.

The implication was pretty clear to me, in that by reducing politics down to being things reasonable people can always disagree over, you're giving actual bad actors in the space too much credit.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#355

Post by lawn »

risyachka wrote: post #309
EvilTrout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

>> claiming they were all garbage its not a claim if you prove it. Tt becomes a fact. Blow proved his point by making a full blown programming language where he fixed things he complained about like compilation speed etc. And then made a whole game in his own language.

Blow did not in fact prove that all alternatives were garbage.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#356

Post by ajkjk »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #337
iamwil wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't need to finish it in order for it to have an impact. Makers of FilePilot and Animal Well both attribute Handmade as being big inspirations for them to go the way they did. They said, they got the most value from the first 50 eps or so. You'll hear lots of them on the Wookash podcast.

Still, its completely ridiculous to rag on other programmers practices so much while you can't even finish your own project Its like everything these guys rant about you could add on the tagline "...yet the world keeps spinning and we all keep shipping things"

it is literally just not ridiculous

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#357

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

DashAnimal wrote: post #351
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jonathan Blow is one of my personal heroes, but he does seem to be living 5 years behind politically (he spends a lot of time ranting at the woke crowd, who seem nowhere to be found anymore anyways). That's probably a good thing. I doubt he's as addicted to the internet as the rest of us. He's said some odd things in interviews in the last couple years though. I wanted to substantiate this, but I couldn't find the cl…

He is definitely "online". I saw him tweet about Hasan's dog which - you have to know about streaming political figures and the latest happenings at least a little bit. Maybe not addicted but he knows what is up and still has the views he has.

I wonder how people are able to stay functional while being online. I'm in 2 states. (1) Very productive and joyful. (2) Extreme dysfunctional and commenting on HN and Reddit.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#358

Post by sesm »

kjksf wrote: post #98
progbits wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious he had to build a new language just so he could create a sokoban game with graphics of flash era. I'm sure it builds fast and whatever, but you could make this in python in few weeks.

He didn't have to. He wanted to. Which is the same motivation as creator of rust, zig, nim, ruby, perl, python had. They all wanted to make a programming language better at something. So I don't see anything "hilarious" about it.

Rust was created on a Mozilla payroll to provide a C++ alternative with better concurrency support for the purpose of browser engine rewrite. Also, Rust doesn't have a 'creator', the person tasked with leading the project didn't have the authority to make the decisions, see https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#359

Post by dismalaf »

biophysboy wrote: post #272
torginus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political? The most political I've seen him get was when he spoke out against the idea of accepting technical compromises for the sake of not hurting people's feelings and being PC. As in, you get to be cranky as long as you're arguing for the highest quality solution

He gets political.. Just as an example, he claimed that it was obvious that COVID was a lab leak in 2021. This is not obvious at all if you read Michael Worobey's rigorous work instead of rely on Blow's arrogant intuitions. I will still play Jonathan Blow's next game, but I think he is a bit of a hack outside of game design.

The lab leak theory was always credible. Here in Canada there was a big scandal with Chinese scientists who worked for one of our labs who secretly transferred specimens from Winnipeg to Wuhan in 2019 and the subsequent police investigation went public in 2020.

Here's a good article that's basically a summary of events (as well as teaser for a book): https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/from-our-lab-to-theirs-...

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#360

Post by tommica »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #337
iamwil wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't need to finish it in order for it to have an impact. Makers of FilePilot and Animal Well both attribute Handmade as being big inspirations for them to go the way they did. They said, they got the most value from the first 50 eps or so. You'll hear lots of them on the Wookash podcast.

Still, its completely ridiculous to rag on other programmers practices so much while you can't even finish your own project Its like everything these guys rant about you could add on the tagline "...yet the world keeps spinning and we all keep shipping things"

Not really. Let's reverse the situation on you - why should we take your opinion seriously, we have no idea how much you have shipped, if anything at all, so by your logic, your ragging on the other programmers practices is ridiculous.

I've shipped a few things over the years, but doubt I have strong takes in programming, besides 'the "properness" of a variables name is dependent on the amount of lines between it's definition and usage.' Doubt anyone will take my considerations seriously.

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