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

I'm Leaving Mojang

notch.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 436 posts

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#421

Post by DanBC »

kaoD wrote: post #419
DanBC wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Verbal contract" always refers to spoken contracts! This is about usage, not definition. To interrupt a hrwad with a pointless aside in a snarky manner about a common (mis)use of "verbal" deserves a downvote. Your inability to find an example of someone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" has been noted. :p

> Your inability to find an example of someone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" has been noted. :p Did you even search Google? Do your homework!

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/wales/consumer_w/consumer_prot...

here's one. Oh wait, they're using verbal to talk about oral contracts.

http://www.contractsandagreements.co.uk/law-and-verbal-agree...

here's another. oh wait! they're doing the same.

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/young-entrepreneurs/con...

Here's one from a national UK newspaper. They're using verbal to mean oral.

Here's another UK newspaper: http://careers.theguardian.com/careers-blog/contracts-employ...

And again, they carefully use written to mean written and verbal to mean spoken.

The first two pages of my Google search failed to show anyone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" - and it's pretty obvious why. A written contract is just a contract, or if you really need to specify whether it's written or spoken you'd be obtuse to use the word "verbal" to describe a written contract.

Perhaps it's a US / UK thing?

EDIT: put more smilies in.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#422

Post by mikeash »

ilaksh wrote: post #393
mikeash wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that he hasn't followed up Minecraft with anything noteworthy despite having plenty of time and way more than enough money, and apparently wanting to build something new and successful with 0x10c.

He has followed it with several noteworthy projects. People confuse popularity with merit. Things become extremely popular because of chance network effects. Humans are herd animals. You get a big hit if you are lucky enough to start a stampede. (Or if you spend a lot of energy carefully engineering a stampede). Not getting a stampede doesn't mean you didn't make something amazing. He did build something new and succ…

I don't get it. At least two of you have replied as if I based my comment on the lack of any popular followup to Minecraft. What did I say that made you think that?

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#423

Post by DanBC »

dragonwriter wrote: post #420
DanBC wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even wikipedia says you shouldn't use them as a reference. Can you find any example of usage of "verbal contract" to mean anything other than "spoken contract"?

> Can you find any example of usage of "verbal contract" to mean anything other than "spoken contract"? http://www.californialaborlawattorney.com/implied-and-oral-c... Contrary to common wisdom, an informal exchange of promises can still be binding and legally as valid as a written contract. A spoken contract is often called an "oral contract", not a "verbal contract." A verbal contract is simply a contract that uses…

So, that's clearly saying that people use "verbal contract" to mean "spoken contract" - it's not an example of someone using the term "verbal contract" to mean "written contract".

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#424

Post by mikeash »

egypturnash wrote: post #343
mikeash wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that he hasn't followed up Minecraft with anything noteworthy despite having plenty of time and way more than enough money, and apparently wanting to build something new and successful with 0x10c.

As a creator, I don't envy Notch. Imagine having the question "will this be another Minecraft?" in the back of your head EVERY TIME you sit down to try and make something. It's the same fear that comes after even a modest Big Success; will my next book beat the big one? Will my next album? It's easy to fall into a hole of just cranking out more of the same - my friend Ursula Vernon, for instance, is on something like…

I think you have to just ignore what people think and do what you do. This seems to be Notch's way of doing it. More power to him, I say.

I'm sure Steve Jobs didn't care what people thought of him either. He just defaulted to "they will love what I do because I will create something great", whereas Notch seems to be more like "people are trouble, so go away." Which would probably be how I'd do it too.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#425

Post by dredmorbius »

raldi wrote: post #172
dredmorbius wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the ski resort closed due to lack of snow from global warming, his business failed as increasing amounts of financial capital were required for ever falling returns on new energy exploration, globalization collapsed due to increased fuel and energy costs making shipping child-labor textiles and fatuous electronics 12,000 miles uneconomic. If your model of the world suggests that fishing isn't a sustainable acti…

https://www.google.com/search?q=fishing+unsustainable

Yes, there are a great many present fishing practices which are unsustainable, virtually all of them industrial. It's one of the great ecological tragedies of the 20th century / industrial age.

However primitive / simple line-fishing and small-net fishing have been practiced, sustainably, for thousands of years.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#426

Post by psquid »

norswap wrote: post #345
mikeash wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that Notch may not actually be all that talented. I mean, he's probably more so than the average Joe, but not super exceptionally talented. It seems like he got lucky, and was good enough to leverage his success into more success and was good enough of a businessman to profit handsomely from the whole thing, but that's about it. I understand that he hasn't done anything on Minecraft in quite a wh…

He is talented, at least insofar that he is a great programmer, and has a knack for gameplay mechanics. Just watch his streams or look at this game (even the ludumdare one, they may not be much, but they're slick). I sure failed to deliver a follow-up to Minecraft, but that was never his goal. He just wants to tinker and have fun, which is also why most of his game projects just stay at the embryonic stage; it seems…

He's not so much a great programmer as a productive one (not that those are concepts that can't coexist, he just isn't both).

He's very good at taking an idea and making it work, then building new stuff on that, but less so at actually making things robust in an architectural sense. Moving on to the next thing that interests him also doesn't help that.

A lot of the biggest hiccups in Minecraft's stability are more-or-less directly caused by having to work around stuff that was coded in a way that made sense at the time, but gradually fitted less and less well to the game as it now stood.

I'd say at this point a lot of Notch's original code is outright gone, and that's a good thing. His vision is still at the core of it, and that's what he really brought to the project.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#427

Post by dragonwriter »

DanBC wrote: post #423
dragonwriter wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you find any example of usage of "verbal contract" to mean anything other than "spoken contract"? http://www.californialaborlawattorney.com/implied-and-oral-c... Contrary to common wisdom, an informal exchange of promises can still be binding and legally as valid as a written contract. A spoken contract is often called an "oral contract", not a "verbal contract." A verbal contract is simply a contract that uses…

So, that's clearly saying that people use "verbal contract" to mean "spoken contract" - it's not an example of someone using the term "verbal contract" to mean "written contract".

> it's not an example of someone using the term "verbal contract" to mean "written contract".

A verbal contract is simply a contract that uses words.

How is that not an example of a use of "verbal contract" to mean a category which includes both written and oral contracts?

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#428

Post by easytiger »

vanattab wrote: post #408
easytiger wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but Woz isn't contributing technically anymore

Is notch? I was under the impression that notch has not worked on any real production code in a long time. I was always under the impression that he is not "technically" that good and the original minecraft code was very inefficient but I could be wrong.

Every time game programmers get called out for writing bad game code i get a bit angry. Games are a very convoluted thing to have to express in a procedural fashion.

Have you ever looked at a hello world opengl program in java that includes textures and bump mapping and light source stuff? Its a mess.

Also being highly productive has bugger all to do with writing "good code". Almost no code gets the job done.

I've written plenty of stuff that is "bad code" that runs faster (in a world were speed is important) and makes more money than the elegantly designed frameworks i've built.

I would go so far as to say good code is contradictory to highly productive solutions that get the job done. Indeed i know one large firm that employs and spends millions trying to find the best c++ programmers they can.

All they do is sit all day arguing about the best way to do things. Chatting to them in the pub they guess they write about 1000 lines of code a year that gets into production.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#429

Post by wtbob »

Lazare wrote: post #356
wtbob wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that the money was necessary in order to pay for the (really quite expensive) servers which people play on. And that Mojang were changing the culture as it has been, and as it has been successful. It's sad to see the effect this has had on the servers I've played on. And it was all so pointless: at the end of the day, who really cares if players who chuck in $10/month get a free set of diamond armour or a ho…

Here's the problematic script: Little Johnny finds a server that is selling diamond tools for $100 a pop. He says something about how he doesn't know hoe to buy things online, and a nice server admin walks him through "borrowing" his parents credit card and making the purchase. His parents get the bill, hit the ceiling, google "Minecraft", get a number for Mojang, call up, and start screaming at people to refund the…

Parents should control their children, right? When I was a kid, I wouldn't have dreamed of stealing my folks' credit card—and had I, that would have been their fault for raising me poorly, and my fault for doing it, and the criminals' fault for encouraging me to do it, not some random fourth party's fault for not saying, 'don't do that.'

People should be sane. The right response to a lunatic who blames Mojang for his child's actions is to hang up.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#430

Post by yupmetoo »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #402
yupmetoo wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps he doesn't WANT to be the kind of person you "we all" wish he was. This idea that people who are good enough at a thing must somehow become a CEO or leader creates a lot of unhappy people. Let the managers manage, and the engineers make things. Don't put pressure on people to do something they don't want just because you want to see what happens.

You just repeated what I have said without disagreeing with me, but somehow you made it sound like you are telling something of the opposite of what I meant.

You said he "doesn't have what it takes" which was what I was disagreeing with - he may very well have what it takes but he's chosen to not pursue that path.
Post reply on HN