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Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

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Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#91

Post by willismichael »

vorg wrote: post #84
willismichael wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He is a terrible, terrible coder. I've had an idea brewing in my head for quite some time, and while I still don't quite have the words to express it completely, it more or less boils down to this: There isn't necessarily a correlation between being a good programmer and shipping a successful product. Now of course we can argue over the definition of "good programmer" and "successful product". I started as a hobby…

> Lately I've realized that having pristine, elegant code is NOT the goal. The goal is to ship software that people actually use. It depends on the use case and business model of your software. If you want to ship a single version of something then don't worry about code quality. If you're market testing and will get resources for a rewrite if the product takes off then again speed to market is more important than co…

Agreed - nobody is arguing that throwing together sloppy code is always a good thing. Mostly I'm just saying that some amount of sloppy code isn't necessary a bad thing. Like you say, the amount of sloppy code that you can get away with depends on what you are doing.

There are vast discussions about this both online and in books, referring to "sloppy code" as "technical debt". Just like monetary debt, sometimes it is worth taking on a significant debt, while there are other times that it is best to avoid debt. It's a judgement call either way, and I've found that I tend to err on the side of being too scared of technical debt.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#92

Post by voltagex_ »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #34
ddevault wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also spent time examining Notch's coding habits. He is a terrible, terrible coder. Minecraft was (and still is) an unoptimized, poorly designed piece of crap when he handed it off to the rest of Mojang. The DCPU-16 he designed had many flaws and his assembler for it threw out assembly convention. He makes very basic mistakes very frequently and his core designs are flawed. I say this as someone who has spent a c…

So, uhm... how many blockbuster games have you shipped, just out of curiosity? Not an ad hominem attack. Just, curious, because someone with such confident opinions as yours about notch's abilities must surely have shipped a few.

No, it's close to an appeal to authority fallacy. The person you've replied to has reimplemented the Minecraft server along with a few other frameworks.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#93

Post by macspoofing »

ddevault wrote: post #29
kleiba wrote: post #19

Now, I haven't seen one line of Notch's code. I have no idea if it's well structured or spaghetti. I would make an educated guess and say that there's a lot of the basics in this project that have been ported over from the Minecraft or 0x10c code. This last point is rather unlikely I think. I spent more than one or two weeks worth of time watching the various screencasts you can find on twitch.tv of Notch coding (I f…

I've also spent time examining Notch's coding habits. He is a terrible, terrible coder. Minecraft was (and still is) an unoptimized, poorly designed piece of crap when he handed it off to the rest of Mojang. The DCPU-16 he designed had many flaws and his assembler for it threw out assembly convention. He makes very basic mistakes very frequently and his core designs are flawed. I say this as someone who has spent a c…

>He is a terrible, terrible coder.

Oh come on.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#94

Post by voltagex_ »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #49
skizm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notch's code is worth $150 million dollars. What's the going rate for "a damn" these days?

As amusing as your wordplay might be, the point being made is that Notch's coding skill should not be idolized or used as a reference for writing good code . A tangible consequence of his inability is that Minecraft takes up far more resources than it reasonably should and is very difficult to maintain, which has been echoed by several Mojang devs who have since picked it up.

Do you think they'll ever move away from Java?

Do you think Minecraft requires a complete rewrite to be maintainable?

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#95

Post by georgemcbay »

melling wrote: post #75
chrismonsanto wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of a person even idolizes someone for writing great code? Are we on the same site? I've been reading HN since it was called Startup News, and I have never felt such a disconnect before. > The Instagram founders didn't have a programming background Instagram could be worth a trillion dollars and I wouldn't give a shit about it. Show me the code. Satisfy me intellectually. Not everything is about money, and…

Beats me. I guess someday when you're an old man, right before you close your eyes for the last time, you can imagine all that cool code that you wrote, and say what a great life you had. You were a hacker. Steve, Larry, Notch, and the Instagram guys can know what they did made a difference. The world is a different place because they lived. They connected the important dots and hacked life...

There are lots of ways to live a great life and relatively few of them involve fame and fortune.

Also there are many people who make a big difference without achieving fame and fortune. Even within the tech industry I would argue that, for example, Dennis Ritchie's contributions were far more fundamentally important than any of the people you listed, yet he never achieved the massive wealth or mainstream fame of those you've mentioned.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#96

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

voltagex_ wrote: post #94
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As amusing as your wordplay might be, the point being made is that Notch's coding skill should not be idolized or used as a reference for writing good code . A tangible consequence of his inability is that Minecraft takes up far more resources than it reasonably should and is very difficult to maintain, which has been echoed by several Mojang devs who have since picked it up.

Do you think they'll ever move away from Java? Do you think Minecraft requires a complete rewrite to be maintainable?

I don't think they'll ever move away from Java. I don't think Minecraft requires something quite on the scale of a complete rewrite, but perhaps starting from scratch and pasting in bits and pieces of the original to save time would help things.

They are working on rewriting substantial portions of the codebase, but unfortunatley Notch didn't hand it off to the most skilled maintainers and they aren't making things much better.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#97

Post by [deleted] »

willismichael wrote: post #43
ddevault wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also spent time examining Notch's coding habits. He is a terrible, terrible coder. Minecraft was (and still is) an unoptimized, poorly designed piece of crap when he handed it off to the rest of Mojang. The DCPU-16 he designed had many flaws and his assembler for it threw out assembly convention. He makes very basic mistakes very frequently and his core designs are flawed. I say this as someone who has spent a c…

> He is a terrible, terrible coder. I've had an idea brewing in my head for quite some time, and while I still don't quite have the words to express it completely, it more or less boils down to this: There isn't necessarily a correlation between being a good programmer and shipping a successful product. Now of course we can argue over the definition of "good programmer" and "successful product". I started as a hobby…

[deleted]

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#98

Post by romaniv »

willismichael wrote: post #91
vorg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lately I've realized that having pristine, elegant code is NOT the goal. The goal is to ship software that people actually use. It depends on the use case and business model of your software. If you want to ship a single version of something then don't worry about code quality. If you're market testing and will get resources for a rewrite if the product takes off then again speed to market is more important than co…

Agreed - nobody is arguing that throwing together sloppy code is always a good thing. Mostly I'm just saying that some amount of sloppy code isn't necessary a bad thing. Like you say, the amount of sloppy code that you can get away with depends on what you are doing. There are vast discussions about this both online and in books, referring to "sloppy code" as "technical debt". Just like monetary debt, sometimes it is…

Software engineers have an unfortunate tendency to accumulate technical debt and then run away from paying it. I've seen this way, way more often and with far worse overall cost than any kind of perfectionism. The dichotomy between quality and speed of development is often an illusion anyway.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#99

Post by melling »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #90
gizmo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about money, it's about providing value. Beautiful code that solves the wrong problem is just broken, because it doesn't do what it sets out to do. I don't see much beauty in code that's broken like that. "For every complex problem there's an answer that's clear, simple, and wrong."

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I think you are saying something different than the person I replied to. To me, the statement "What kind of a person even idolizes someone for writing great code?" suggests that programming is not an art, not worthy of further consideration, a mere means to an end to whatever product to be sold. To me, that statement is like saying "Who even idolizes ? The guys who sold…

I've been here over 4 years. And I certainly appreciate good coders, and there are times when they do make a difference. e.g. Bill Atkinson...

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_O...

However, what was really important is that Bill helped to make the Macintosh great. However, I don't think people will be studying his 68000 assembler in the future like a great math formula or a great painting. We are talking about him because of the results of his work.

Re: Notch, WebGL, Dart, and ramping up quickly

#100

Post by gizmo »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #90
gizmo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about money, it's about providing value. Beautiful code that solves the wrong problem is just broken, because it doesn't do what it sets out to do. I don't see much beauty in code that's broken like that. "For every complex problem there's an answer that's clear, simple, and wrong."

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I think you are saying something different than the person I replied to. To me, the statement "What kind of a person even idolizes someone for writing great code?" suggests that programming is not an art, not worthy of further consideration, a mere means to an end to whatever product to be sold. To me, that statement is like saying "Who even idolizes ? The guys who sold…

Hmm, you're probably right that the other poster meant his disparaging remark about code quality literally. I also enjoy writing great code for the sake of it (artisanship), but from a business perspective bad, insecure, unreliable code typically won't hold you back much. Treating your employees badly is often good for business too. I'd much rather live in a world where great products win and doing the right thing matters, but we don't.

I also agree that the tone of the community has shifted a lot in the past years. Still, given how much HN has grown the community has survived surprisingly well. It's a bit meaner and nit-pickier than it used to be, though.

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