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You are probably right -- it was bad taste. I got a bit annoyed by the tone of the article; I don't think personal insults have a place in a technical discussio

You are probably right -- it was bad taste. I got a bit annoyed by the tone of the article; I don't think personal insults have a place in a technical discussion. I taught Computer Graphics for several years, and I came across two kinds of students: uninterested, so no matter what you do they probably won't learn; and interested and trying hard but not understanding, in which case it's my responsibility as the teacher to find a way to get the idea into their heads. In this latter case I believe asking someone who is trying (but failing) to understand what I'm saying "What the fuck is wrong with you?" doesn't lead to better understanding on their part. Yes, I promote my own work, but this is because I feel it caters to a public that is usually left out -- the absolute beginner. The kind of people who are missing a mental leap or two to get the concepts but are either ignored or essentially called idiots for not understanding.

camperman 11y ago
Gaffer is absolutely not saying 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' to beginners. He's saying it to the so-called experts who posted nonsense like this: "Yeah... Gaffer is well-known as a guide, but also kind of horribly flawed. Question 1 for networking development: Do you need everything that TCP offers? If yes, then use TCP. You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. If not, read on." This was a gilded +20 comment in the thread despite a) being nonsense and b) having the temerity to call his advice 'horribly flawed.' He is an expert with multiple shipped AAA games. And he prefixed his rant with RANT MODE ON. Sometimes you just need the cluestick.
- pyre 11y ago
  > You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. I took this to be something more akin to "never implement your own crypto." If everyone followed that advice there would be no crypto, so it's obviously not blanket advice.
  - aavegmittal 11y ago
    Agreed. TCP is a great general purpose communication protocol, but using it in all situations is probably not a good idea. For eg, for a specific case of mobile networks, a custom protocol built over UDP could out perform TCP. details here: https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-doesnt-have-to-be-so-slow.html https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-d...
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Even looking at it like that, it's wrong. TCP has a lot of tunable parameters where the choices are baked into it, and it assumes that extra round trips are no big deal. Crypto does not have all that many tradeoffs. You just need expert implementation. It's dangerous and unnecessary to do it yourself. For something that is low-bandwidth and latency-sensitive, you can take TCP and make minor adjustments and come out with something that is far better suited. Even something as dumb and easy as sending all packets twice could turn an semi-common jitter into an ultra-rare jitter. If you could open a TCP socket with forward error correction options, and disable head-of-line blocking, then you could probably argue against custom TCP-like protocols. But that's not the world we live in.
    - pyre 11y ago
      I was using "never implement your own crypto" as an example. I think that "never implement your own crypto" is a more important rule to follow than anything regarding TCP. On the other hand, if you don't know much about networking, trying to reimplement TCP over UDP isn't likely to gain you better performance. As with most things, there is no substitute for knowing what are doing.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        I know it was an example, but the crypto saying is actually a good rule of thumb, while "don't do TCP" is a pretty bad rule of thumb. You don't need to know that much about networking to get something that's better than TCP in this specific use case. It may be unoptimized and terrible but your goal is latency. Just pretend that 5% of packets will get lost and do something to compensate, and you beat TCP on imperfect networks, even as a novice.
        zurn 11y ago
        There's a lot of work besides performance to get right in a transport protocol though. Just getting the retransmission working like you want is a small part of the job. WebRTC went for UDP-encapsulated SCTP in order to get a transport without HOL blocking. I'd look into that or an existing UDP game net transport (like Enet) first.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    I think 'never implement your own crypto' really means, 'this is an area where there is no substitute for knowing what the hell you are doing. Sometimes knowing what you are doing is not hard (changing a tire), sometimes it is (cryto and networking)
Cederfjard 11y ago
To me, it feels like the biggest gripe isn't with people who don't understand, but with those who claim they do when they don't. It's always frustrating to see people talk confidently out of their ass, especially when they're criticising you. I'm usually not bothered by insults or harsh language, so perhaps we're viewing this post through different lenses.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I expressed the same view here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10212003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10212003 I think the person didn't even read the articles but smeared them anyway. Blasting such a person is entirely justified. That the rant included useful information, too, was quite generous.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I have mixed feelings about it. A student with character will at least read the material, try to understand it, and then ask questions about confusing points. So, I put it to the test by loading up the article the Redditer saw. First paragraph explained it's part of a series with this link: http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/ http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/ Very first link explained some of what Reddit poster asked with others covering how to solve the problem and why each method was used. Reading that person's post shows he or she took a casual glance at Part 4, didn't attempt to read rest, drew conclusions, then smeared same article on Reddit, then pretended to know what he or she was talking about on advanced aspects, and then asked some questions. This is the kind of behavior that makes the Internet drop verbal bombs on people as punishment and to deter future instances of laziness and arrogance. So, when seeing this, the writer has several choices: reward the behavior by rewriting their articles points in new comment for just that lazy person w/ specific references to things he or she ignored; link back to original w/ guidance on specific parts he or she ignored; blast him or her for being a lazy idiot who writes criticisms of stuff he or she doesn't even read. I think the latter is an entirely valid strategy in such a situation. It has the side benefit of preparing the person for the fact that the Internet will drop bombs on them when they display laziness, ignorance, and sense of authority at the same time. Hopefully the deterrent effect kicks in with the poster reading the next article and its links first. And only then questioning or criticizing part of it. Less likely to get rants that way from that writer, other writers, FOSS projects, and anyone else that doesn't tolerate such bad behavior. You're much more patient than most. Nothing wrong with that either. Let's just differentiate between people making solid attempt to learn and people like this poster. Nobody's insulting the former. If they did, I'd totally agree with you. Far as this poster, I'd have grilled him or her too.
cortesoft 11y ago
Was there no third type of student: those who WERE understanding?
- ggambetta 11y ago
  Hahaha, of course :D

camperman 11y ago

Gaffer is absolutely not saying 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' to beginners. He's saying it to the so-called experts who posted nonsense like this: "Yeah... Gaffer is well-known as a guide, but also kind of horribly flawed. Question 1 for networking development: Do you need everything that TCP offers? If yes, then use TCP. You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. If not, read on." This was a gilded +20 comment in the thread despite a) being nonsense and b) having the temerity to call his advice 'horribly flawed.' He is an expert with multiple shipped AAA games. And he prefixed his rant with RANT MODE ON. Sometimes you just need the cluestick.

pyre 11y ago
> You're not going to outperform TCP to do what it's good at. I took this to be something more akin to "never implement your own crypto." If everyone followed that advice there would be no crypto, so it's obviously not blanket advice.
- aavegmittal 11y ago
  Agreed. TCP is a great general purpose communication protocol, but using it in all situations is probably not a good idea. For eg, for a specific case of mobile networks, a custom protocol built over UDP could out perform TCP. details here: https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-doesnt-have-to-be-so-slow.html https://packetzoom.com/blog/lessons-learned-tcp-slow-start-d...
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  Even looking at it like that, it's wrong. TCP has a lot of tunable parameters where the choices are baked into it, and it assumes that extra round trips are no big deal. Crypto does not have all that many tradeoffs. You just need expert implementation. It's dangerous and unnecessary to do it yourself. For something that is low-bandwidth and latency-sensitive, you can take TCP and make minor adjustments and come out with something that is far better suited. Even something as dumb and easy as sending all packets twice could turn an semi-common jitter into an ultra-rare jitter. If you could open a TCP socket with forward error correction options, and disable head-of-line blocking, then you could probably argue against custom TCP-like protocols. But that's not the world we live in.
  - pyre 11y ago
    I was using "never implement your own crypto" as an example. I think that "never implement your own crypto" is a more important rule to follow than anything regarding TCP. On the other hand, if you don't know much about networking, trying to reimplement TCP over UDP isn't likely to gain you better performance. As with most things, there is no substitute for knowing what are doing.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      I know it was an example, but the crypto saying is actually a good rule of thumb, while "don't do TCP" is a pretty bad rule of thumb. You don't need to know that much about networking to get something that's better than TCP in this specific use case. It may be unoptimized and terrible but your goal is latency. Just pretend that 5% of packets will get lost and do something to compensate, and you beat TCP on imperfect networks, even as a novice.
      - zurn 11y ago
        There's a lot of work besides performance to get right in a transport protocol though. Just getting the retransmission working like you want is a small part of the job. WebRTC went for UDP-encapsulated SCTP in order to get a transport without HOL blocking. I'd look into that or an existing UDP game net transport (like Enet) first.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  I think 'never implement your own crypto' really means, 'this is an area where there is no substitute for knowing what the hell you are doing. Sometimes knowing what you are doing is not hard (changing a tire), sometimes it is (cryto and networking)

Cederfjard 11y ago

To me, it feels like the biggest gripe isn't with people who don't understand, but with those who claim they do when they don't. It's always frustrating to see people talk confidently out of their ass, especially when they're criticising you. I'm usually not bothered by insults or harsh language, so perhaps we're viewing this post through different lenses.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
I expressed the same view here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10212003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10212003 I think the person didn't even read the articles but smeared them anyway. Blasting such a person is entirely justified. That the rant included useful information, too, was quite generous.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I have mixed feelings about it. A student with character will at least read the material, try to understand it, and then ask questions about confusing points. So, I put it to the test by loading up the article the Redditer saw. First paragraph explained it's part of a series with this link: http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/ http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/ Very first link explained some of what Reddit poster asked with others covering how to solve the problem and why each method was used. Reading that person's post shows he or she took a casual glance at Part 4, didn't attempt to read rest, drew conclusions, then smeared same article on Reddit, then pretended to know what he or she was talking about on advanced aspects, and then asked some questions. This is the kind of behavior that makes the Internet drop verbal bombs on people as punishment and to deter future instances of laziness and arrogance. So, when seeing this, the writer has several choices: reward the behavior by rewriting their articles points in new comment for just that lazy person w/ specific references to things he or she ignored; link back to original w/ guidance on specific parts he or she ignored; blast him or her for being a lazy idiot who writes criticisms of stuff he or she doesn't even read. I think the latter is an entirely valid strategy in such a situation. It has the side benefit of preparing the person for the fact that the Internet will drop bombs on them when they display laziness, ignorance, and sense of authority at the same time. Hopefully the deterrent effect kicks in with the poster reading the next article and its links first. And only then questioning or criticizing part of it. Less likely to get rants that way from that writer, other writers, FOSS projects, and anyone else that doesn't tolerate such bad behavior. You're much more patient than most. Nothing wrong with that either. Let's just differentiate between people making solid attempt to learn and people like this poster. Nobody's insulting the former. If they did, I'd totally agree with you. Far as this poster, I'd have grilled him or her too.

cortesoft 11y ago

Was there no third type of student: those who WERE understanding?

ggambetta 11y ago
Hahaha, of course :D