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John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

blogs.uw.edu

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Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#61

Post by e12e »

taybin wrote: post #56
6ren wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At PARC we had a slogan: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points." It was based on a few things from the past like how smart you had to be in Roman times to multiply two numbers together; only geniuses did it. We haven't gotten any smarter, we've just changed our representation system. We think better generally by inventing better representations; that's something that we as computer scientists recognize as one of the m…

According to this, multiplication wasn't so bad: http://turner.faculty.swau.edu/mathematics/materialslibrary/...

Without a table? Just from memory? I think I'd prefer decimal.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#62

Post by btilly »

taybin wrote: post #56
6ren wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At PARC we had a slogan: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points." It was based on a few things from the past like how smart you had to be in Roman times to multiply two numbers together; only geniuses did it. We haven't gotten any smarter, we've just changed our representation system. We think better generally by inventing better representations; that's something that we as computer scientists recognize as one of the m…

According to this, multiplication wasn't so bad: http://turner.faculty.swau.edu/mathematics/materialslibrary/...

Actually real Romans did multiplication on an abacus. Reading from Roman numerals to/from an abacus is an incredibly natural operation.

In Europe the disappearance of abacuses was directly tied to the rise of Arabic notation.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#63

Post by Lockyy »

Arjuna wrote: post #44

Interesting comments on Mac and Linux platforms [1]: "Other interesting sort of PC-ish platforms, we have... the Mac still remains a viable platform for us. The Mac has never required any charity from id, all of those ports have carried their own weight there; they've been viable business platforms. I actually think that the Mac is going to become a little bit more important for us. Interestingly, we have a ton of pe…

The statement that people are less willing to pay for things on the platform is kind of refuted by how the linux demographic always pays almost double what people on osx, and triple what people on windows pay for the humble bundles.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#64

Post by simonh »

Lockyy wrote: post #63
Arjuna wrote: post #44

Interesting comments on Mac and Linux platforms [1]: "Other interesting sort of PC-ish platforms, we have... the Mac still remains a viable platform for us. The Mac has never required any charity from id, all of those ports have carried their own weight there; they've been viable business platforms. I actually think that the Mac is going to become a little bit more important for us. Interestingly, we have a ton of pe…

The statement that people are less willing to pay for things on the platform is kind of refuted by how the linux demographic always pays almost double what people on osx, and triple what people on windows pay for the humble bundles.

And yet he's stating facts based on actual experience doing it.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#65

Post by rapala »

benthumb wrote: post #60

As much as I respect John Carmack, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed that he is rehashing this meme of software development not being a science... OK, wonderful, the state of the art in his shop doesn't rise to the level of being a consistently reproducible, measurable process, but that doesn't mean that this is a permanent condition or that its an insurmountable one.

I didn't get the same impression that you got. To me, Carmack is saying that the biggest thing to focus is how to enforce the known best practices. That we need to understand the social aspects of software development well enough to reap the benefits of improvements in the engineering side. There is science involved in that, but it is mainly stuff from the social sciencies.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#66

Post by Lockyy »

simonh wrote: post #64
Lockyy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement that people are less willing to pay for things on the platform is kind of refuted by how the linux demographic always pays almost double what people on osx, and triple what people on windows pay for the humble bundles.

And yet he's stating facts based on actual experience doing it.

Okay, fair game I concede that he's probably right.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#67

Post by suhastech »

Lockyy wrote: post #63
Arjuna wrote: post #44

Interesting comments on Mac and Linux platforms [1]: "Other interesting sort of PC-ish platforms, we have... the Mac still remains a viable platform for us. The Mac has never required any charity from id, all of those ports have carried their own weight there; they've been viable business platforms. I actually think that the Mac is going to become a little bit more important for us. Interestingly, we have a ton of pe…

The statement that people are less willing to pay for things on the platform is kind of refuted by how the linux demographic always pays almost double what people on osx, and triple what people on windows pay for the humble bundles.

Don't forget the number of people.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#68

Post by rapala »

jberryman wrote: post #32

I don't want to be an ass, but this seems like a lot of vague contradictory rambling. Maybe I missed some big ideas in the parts I skimmed?

I was also a bit confused. He said that stuff like monads are nice, but not that useful in the end. On the other hand, he seemed concerned about how to enforce best practices, to which I count monads in.

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#69

Post by ondrasej »

simonh wrote: post #64
Lockyy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement that people are less willing to pay for things on the platform is kind of refuted by how the linux demographic always pays almost double what people on osx, and triple what people on windows pay for the humble bundles.

And yet he's stating facts based on actual experience doing it.

These two facts are not necessarily in contradiction. At this moment in the current Humble bundle, the average price paid by Linux and Mac users is significantly higher than the average price paid by Windows users, but the total income from Windows is still way higher than the income from Linux and Mac combined, just because of the raw numbers of users.

It looks to me like there are some Linux users who don't mind buying games (and do not mind paying premium for that), but the majority is not interested in buying games at all, regardless of the price.

Moreover, my own experience with buying games is that (digital distribution aside) it was practically impossible to get Linux versions of games (well, at least in Czech rep., where I used to live). And if there was a Linux version at all, using it meant buying a box with the Windows version and the patching it. So, even though I use Linux for work, I used to play games almost exclusively in Windows (and then on XBox, which made things even easier).

Re: John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering

#70

Post by kmm »

simonh wrote: post #64
Lockyy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement that people are less willing to pay for things on the platform is kind of refuted by how the linux demographic always pays almost double what people on osx, and triple what people on windows pay for the humble bundles.

And yet he's stating facts based on actual experience doing it.

So do we, based on the public data provided by The Humble Bundle. He captured and might have analyzed his segment of the market, (the last time 8 years ago!), we can do something with another segment.

There's really no need to be so snappy.

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