Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 229 posts

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#131

Post by Barrin92 »

Almondsetat wrote: post #66
layla5alive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think there aren't other people equally or more qualified? I mean Casey may be the most visible person with those qualifications - but lack of visibility doesn't imply lack of competence, plenty of brilliant people work in the background..

Feel free to point to anyone doing these deep dives that specifically tackle the lost knowledge of the early decades of computer science and the ideas that have not yet come to fruition despite being extremely old

>Feel free to point to anyone doing these deep dives that specifically tackle the lost knowledge of the early decades of computer science

I skimmed through the video because I don't have two hours but there's no lost knowledge in it, he's going over well known papers from Dijkstra, Hoare or Knuth. The paper he bases most of the talk around Knuth's Structured Programming with go to Statements is his most often cited work, there's a very high chance you'll encounter that early in any undergrad course. So the answer to your question is, pretty much at any local uni with a CS course.

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#132

Post by ex-aws-dude »

What I don't understand with both Muratori/Blow is that they seem to be incredulous that someone wouldn't just make software high quality and fast for the sake of it

Like they can't comprehend the fact that these things only happen if there is an incentive for it

I think its because they work in games where there is a business incentive for performance, users care a lot if framerate suffers in a game

They are so used to working in games that they take it for granted that the business incentive for performance exists

As someone who has worked in both AAA games and big tech it just comes across as a bit naive to me

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#133

Post by guitarlimeo »

tialaramex wrote: post #103
inigyou wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't mean you can't learn a lot from the attempt. Technical craftsmanship and project management skill are two completely separate skills. Definitely don't learn project management from Casey.

Sure, but the biggest reason to direct anybody to these videos is that they should actually make that video game they want to make, not just think about it - and so the fact that Handmade Hero just trails off and doesn't end up producing a finished video game is a problem. The craftsmanship is dubious. I think it's a problem that people assume Casey knows what he's doing when so often he's like "We're doing it live"…

Well Billy Basso was hugely inspired by the Handmade Hero series and went on to make the critically acclaimed Animal Well because of it. That's enough of a win for that series in my eyes.

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#134

Post by Sammi »

megagpt3 wrote: post #122
zbentley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're I/O bound, that either means the problem doesn't require much computation - which is possible but fairly rare This is backwards. I bet that by count, many more programs are written in domains where they're necessarily IO bound than the inverse. Anything that uses the network for its core functionality, anything reliant on a datasource whose aggregate contents are O(memory)+ size, or anything reliant on sl…

Modern networks can transfer data more quickly than CPUs can process it. Starting at 100Gbps.

Is that the caliber of hardware I can expect to be working with on a cheap vps?

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#135

Post by tancop »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #43
socalgal2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What games has he shipped?

The legendary games programmer thing is a meme. Casey is professionally best known for his work at RAD game tools (a highly successful middleware provider for game development back in the day), not games he himself developed. What he is most highly regarded for is his teaching, particularly the Handmade Hero series on YouTube, which various programmers directly attribute as being responsible for their own professiona…

"Highly successful middleware provider back in the day" is an understatement.

Bink was the cutscene video codec for a long time and it's still the most popular option by far. Kraken compression is so good Sony worked with AMD to make a hardware decoder for the PS5 and paid for a general license that lets games use it for free. They are probably stronger than ever in terms of games using their tech and collected license fees.

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#136

Post by SideQuark »

megagpt3 wrote: post #122
zbentley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're I/O bound, that either means the problem doesn't require much computation - which is possible but fairly rare This is backwards. I bet that by count, many more programs are written in domains where they're necessarily IO bound than the inverse. Anything that uses the network for its core functionality, anything reliant on a datasource whose aggregate contents are O(memory)+ size, or anything reliant on sl…

Modern networks can transfer data more quickly than CPUs can process it. Starting at 100Gbps.

That’s completely backwards by orders of magnitude. Modern CPUs outrun L1 cache speed by a lot, L1 cache speed is on order of 1000-5000 GB/s, a GB/s is real bits used, is 8x of Gbps, and network speeds include significant overhead bits for frame packing and other data unused for the actual payloads.

And a GPU does orders of magnitude past this.

Networks are not even close.

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/a-new-year-and-new-tests-gpu-l1...

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#137

Post by softwaredoug »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #132

What I don't understand with both Muratori/Blow is that they seem to be incredulous that someone wouldn't just make software high quality and fast for the sake of it Like they can't comprehend the fact that these things only happen if there is an incentive for it I think its because they work in games where there is a business incentive for performance, users care a lot if framerate suffers in a game They are so used…

I think there could be a version of our industry with people doing better work. And it’s worthwhile to study why we don’t have that industry.

Yes it’s incentives - but why these incentives exist and not others is an interesting question to study.

In the 2010s we pushed everyone to learn how to code and maybe lost some of our higher standards. Maybe we’re doing that now with AI?

Maybe broader social and economic incentives have had a lot of short term thinking of late? It’s hard to organize society or a company to go in one direction very long before incentives completely change everything. Who knows, maybe that’s a feature, not a bug.

It’s worth asking though why we have this software industry and not another one. I’m not convinced it’s for legitimate reasons.

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#138

Post by ykonstant »

mariusor wrote: post #121
HexDecOctBin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that I could practically apply in my daily work When has History of any kind ever held practical value?

Is this.. is this a real question?

I hope the above user is being sarcastic.

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#139

Post by ykonstant »

megagpt3 wrote: post #122
zbentley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're I/O bound, that either means the problem doesn't require much computation - which is possible but fairly rare This is backwards. I bet that by count, many more programs are written in domains where they're necessarily IO bound than the inverse. Anything that uses the network for its core functionality, anything reliant on a datasource whose aggregate contents are O(memory)+ size, or anything reliant on sl…

Modern networks can transfer data more quickly than CPUs can process it. Starting at 100Gbps.

What in tarnation?

Re: Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]

#140

Post by jancsika »

Almondsetat wrote: post #66
layla5alive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think there aren't other people equally or more qualified? I mean Casey may be the most visible person with those qualifications - but lack of visibility doesn't imply lack of competence, plenty of brilliant people work in the background..

Feel free to point to anyone doing these deep dives that specifically tackle the lost knowledge of the early decades of computer science and the ideas that have not yet come to fruition despite being extremely old

Even without knowing your specific criteria, #2 on your list must be Alan Kay.

But I'm curious who you think #3 is.

Post reply on HN