Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?

Unfortunately, for the consumer this can also mean skipping some games altogether: for example, I might not be able to play the latest Indiana Jones or Doom game because they refuse to let RT be disabled (unless they get enough pushback, but we can all see where things are heading).

At least there are some (usually indie) games that let you do that, like Incursion: Red River but even with Lumen and other features turned down, the performance is still worse than UE4 games of comparable scene fidelity (not necessarily complexity). I think the industry might have jumped into Nanite and all the adjacent tech way too eagerly.

Of course there is. What people gets presented is look how new graphics is shining. What devs get presented is look how much less manual work you need to get this graphics out of the door. Look at any UE5 presentation aiming at devs. You will be able to see a lot of 'just do this and technology will handle the rest of it'. There is no going back to manually making 3-5 replacements for each and every thing in the game. And the same goes for lights every few meters of a game world.

As a gamedev I don't really care about the regular software. You can see that the main problem for devs is to get paid for it. All kind of schemes with subscriptions and online services and such were tried. People just don't want to pay for the software. The mentality is 'we will get it for pennies on a sale' is the same like with the steam sales. Or even worse people will choose 'free' version with 'promotions' and data collection and whatever else that saves them pennies. Look at 'free to play games' steam category for the example of the horror show.

Oh and I don't think devs are the saints there. You can find a lots of examples that prey on gullible customers or trick people to buy 'digital goods' they don't need or outright bad things with gambling addictions and more.

The only thing consumer can do is to only vote with their wallet and push their representatives to regulate. The stop killing games is an example of the latter. The former is often deemed inefficient but Imho it is the only thing that will separate surviving studios and the shattered ones. As you may see in the press the names and past successes don't save studios from closing their doors now.

I wanna hang out with coders who care, I wanna read articles about caring and how you can achieve more with less code, and I want to see video content that visualizes the sheer insanity of it all. Like those "scale of the universe" videos, except the complexity isn't fascinating, but embarrassing.

Make it uncool, make software bloat a goober thing you people do at most because they "have to", for pointy-haired bosses, or because they're in a rush or under other constraints. Not something that just gets normalized because hey, thinking is hard, caring is hard, so let's all conspire and pretend we're not being deplorable slobs, under the "leadership" of even worse slobs. There is little technical difficulty here, it's mostly social. Ignorance and greed are in cahoots and don't want to get called out, so call them out.

Though I think to start with, you have to not give a shit about the majority, and huddle with people who care and make better things. If the majority comes around, great, if not, still better than standing on the beach, wondering if the ocean will ever spontaneously take this or that shape.