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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

#441

Post by krapp »

incrudible wrote: post #49
krapp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like "simplicity" is often fetishized to the point of counter-productivity. Show me anything that either Blow or Muratori are doing that couldn't be done in an existing language or framework. People laugh at games with thousand-case switch statements or if/else chains but they shipped and the end user doesn't care about logarithmic complexity. And most of the time it doesn't even matter. What fails with games…

This reads as if the process and the finished work are somehow separable. If your code is a mess that you hate working on, it seeps through to your design and your design process. I too had a brief period where, for example, I thought dynamic typing lessens friction, but in reality it just causes massively more friction down the line. Many people never get to go down the line, so that is fine for them, but not me.

>This reads as if the process and the finished work are somehow separable. If your code is a mess that you hate working on, it seeps through to your design and your design process.

I didn't say anything about hating working on the code, but every example of game code I've seen has been a mess, even in games that are considered well designed. So I have to disagree - the process and finished work often are separable. What are ports if not an example of that?

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

#442

Post by dymk »

andypants wrote: post #428
dymk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still then, it's a stretch to say that Jai influenced other languages. How could it when only a handful of game-centered applications have been built by a handfull of devs? Rust and Zig developed features by cutting their teeth on large amounts of real software, not by following one guy's personal project that has no source, no library, no spec available.

Jai, odin and zig's creators are all part of the handmade network, a community of programmers. You are vastly underestimating blow's reach/influence. Odin's creator has credited Jai as an influence. You can see him in the comments of old jai youtube videos (videos that go into a lot of depth about the language design). Odin's syntax and features are very similar to Jai, the influence is pretty clear. Odin has other i…

I've never heard of Odin or seen any projects written in it, seen a company hire for it, or seen it discussed at a PL conference. There's no stable compiler for it, and no spec. Yeah, I'm just one person, so maybe I'm just in my own bubble, but these are hobby projects with a very small communities.

> Many programmers

...how many?

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

#443

Post by CupricTea »

KittenInABox wrote: post #436
CupricTea wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One that links to the primary source and fully in-context as an absolute starting point. Even your pseudoquote here gives me nothing to work with. "It" doesn't help? Seriously? What am I supposed to make with this vague out of context snippet?

The subredditdrama post in question does in fact contain a link to the full tweet, which you objected to as bad faith. So I'm asking what is a good faith way to link to this tweet.

It could have been linked here directly instead of presented through the lens of a toxic smear community.

Presenting it through a community called "SubredditDrama" is poisoning the well[1]. I am not going to entertain that smear tactic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

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

#444

Post by thrance »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #242
dagmx wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a comment, that often when people say things that are within your own political belief system, that people often don’t consider them political. But what is neutral to someone is not inherently neutral to others. Or even if it’s neutral to them, it’s still a form of political expression.

Do people really believe that opinions on interpersonal communication count as politics now? I'm asking sincerely.

That's not what people are talking about when they're speaking of Jon Blow's politics. Most likely they are referring to his weird takes on COVID or his MAGA tweets.

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

#445

Post by hbn »

EvilTrout wrote: post #204
piker wrote: post #10

I always find Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori to be great educators and advocates on the “simplicity” end of the spectrum. Jonathan can be super abrasive and comes with some political baggage, but does a good job advocating against what he perceives as unnecessary complexity in software. Opponents would suggest his domain and cherry-picked examples create the perfect environment for his positions and that he does ta…

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…

If there's anyone who I think deserves to be able to say "all existing languages/engines suck" it's someone who made his own language from scratch to make an engine with it from scratch to make a game with it from scratch to combat the problem.

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

#446

Post by tommica »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #367
tommica wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I'm not making any claims about programming practices If someone comes out saying "you guys are all doing this wrong" and yet they can't finish their own project then why would I take their advice seriously? If you suggest a way of doing software development and you can't even show it working out to completion, what does that say about your proposed methods?

I had a larger rant written, but this is the only part that had any value:

Yes, one can argue that lack of produces results does not give big plusses towards their work processes, but it does not necessarily negate the value of the concepts that they preach. The value of a thing is not only defined by who is spouting it, one must evaluate the argument on it's own merits, not by evaluating of the people yelling about it.

There are plenty of concepts in this world that I cannot make work, that does not mean that the concepts are bad. It only means that the failure reflects on me and my in-capabilities.

And this might be something that you are not noticing: You are making claims about programming practices indirectly by stating that THEIR practices are not worth considering due to lack of shipping anything.

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

#447

Post by hbn »

20k wrote: post #336
NathanaelRea wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a rediculous assessment. "How many games have you shipped in the last 10 years" is the standard for how good your advice is. John has made two games + one soon in the last 17 years. Braid started off the indie boom, and the witness was a blockbuster hit. Casey works on game engines and optimization, and has an entire video series about writing a game from scratch. I agree that some authors don't ship a…

Braid didn't start the indie boom, Garry's mod did

Soulja Boy never made any videos about Garry's Mod

This is kind of a joke and I know he was mostly poking fun at Braid but this does speak to how mainstream indie games got in that first wave that hit XBLA.

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

#448

Post by johnnyanmac »

serial_dev wrote: post #179
adito wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you just handpicked the covid trutherism without quoting the full thing, here the full quote from the link above: > Additionally, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that Jon’s beliefs/priorities and mine are not aligned. He’s adversarial to people talking about privilege and representation, is dismissive of diversity efforts, has dabbled in covid trutherism, and is pro-MAGA. Here the po…

I left a link to the exact post I'm referring to with the whole thread available for context. And I didn't include the whole thing, because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable. A game is released (which in part includes their work if I understand it right) and they can't help themselves and make this about Trump. I'm sure I'd have the same opinion if I saw what's happening in Tru…

>because it doesn't change my point which is that IMO BSky people are insufferable.

Yes, but we're here to talk about Jonathan Blow and his new game.

You can argue his politics are relevant. Your opinion on Bluesky, not so much.

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

#449

Post by nomel »

thrance wrote: post #435
nomel wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could there be a difference in the social reward centers of the brain, based on gender, possibly from the biological necessities of having children? We know reward centers are not the same, between the sexes, since heterosexual attraction is the norm (and why gay conversion therapy can't work). Some brain structure and function is hard coded. Could these hormone influenced reward centers differ in social rewards , or…

How would that explain the very basic fact that most programmers were women in the early days of computing? It can't. The most important factors deciding which gender is most represented in programming are sociological.

You need to look at the history of it all. There wasn't the freedom back then, that we have now, where women could choose their profession based on personal interest. Back then programmers were women. It wasn't considered a man's job [1].

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/coding-used-to-be-a-womans-...

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

#450

Post by thrance »

bitexploder wrote: post #328
biophysboy wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of us are grossly unqualified to provide opinions on any domain save some hyper specialized domain we invest years of effort into. I always think about that when reading comments on the Internet :)

If only the tech gurus of the internet stayed in their lanes, or if people knew better than to take their beliefs from clueless entrepreneurs who got lucky once, the world would be a much better place. Alas, tis not the one we live in.
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