7 ms·

Don't discount the creativity, intelligence, and dedication it takes to create something like this. Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a pr

by weerd 5y ago

Don't discount the creativity, intelligence, and dedication it takes to create something like this. Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a priority.

ironmagma 5y ago
Nonsense. Sure, they wouldn’t make this exact game, but neither would the entire rest of the population who is capable of making a project like this. Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability, and if you need to convince yourself of that, think about how fast a computer can do an arbitrary thing versus how fast a human can, or how different a mouse’s musical intellect is from a human’s.
- oogabooga123 5y ago
  > Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability This is a story we stop telling kids around the end of high school. We tell this story because, as a child, being told you’re dumb can stunt intellectual growth, or being told you’re not physically capable can stop kids from forming a habit of exercising.
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    I don’t mean it in the way it’s sometimes expressed as, “you can train anyone to do anything,” I mean it in the sense that the 50%ile capable person is really all things considered, not that different from the 95%ile capable person. The range is just not that high. A person can only accomplish so much in the day and with the animal body we are given. Compare that to a computer, which for many tasks, can accomplish things at a rate 10,000,000 times faster than a human.
    - oogabooga123 5y ago
      > I mean it in the sense that the 50%ile capable person is really all things considered, not that different from the 95%ile capable person. You must be living on a different planet from me. I can kind of see how someone might be tempted to just say “you know what, you’re right” and let you keep on thinking that, though.
      - ironmagma 5y ago
        Maybe it’s born out of all these times I’ve seen “10x engineers” hired, or “very senior” managers who will “change everything.” There’s just not that much that one human can do that is fundamentally different from what the median human can, so these hires are almost always overblown.
        radiator 5y ago
        But how is the hiring of those engineers or managers relevant to the current thread, which is about a project explicitly described: "I am a one-man development team doing everything"?
        ironmagma 5y ago
        Claim: Some people have a higher plane of capability than others, so high that it’s such a difference in scale that it’s a fundamental difference in kind as well. Situation: “We have a broken company. Let’s hire one of these superhumans to fix everything.” Reality: the person hired is the same as everyone else, so they can’t apply their superhuman strength to fix the situation. Lesson: People are more similar than they seem. Situation: Complex project seems to be so involved and difficult that it must have been done by someone possessing powers on a different plane than the rest of us. Reality: The creator spent a very long time learning about the concepts and technologies, then spent a shorter, but still long, time building the project. Lesson: Even those who accomplished great things did not do so effortlessly, and not overnight either. Unlike a god, they did not download the “desire to build great things” program and simply execute it. Judgment of the claim: this appearance of higher kindedness is (mostly) an illusion. Most people are largely the same.
        radiator 5y ago
        My point was, the two situations are very different. It is wrong to make similar conclusions. In your first example, the superhuman cannot fix everything because he has to work with other average humans, who drag him down. In the second case, since he is not forced to work in a team, his superior skills are shown in the result.
    - IQunder130 5y ago
      Let's not pretend someone in the 50th percentile can write a game engine in C. If you're on this website and your day job is programming, your expected IQ is already way north of 100.
      - ironmagma 5y ago
        They very much can. Have you ever walked into a classroom and seen the ancient runes left on the board from a more advanced class, wondering how any person can possibly understand all that and wonder whether it was possibly even scribbled as a joke? And then two years later, you realize that you have learned and mastered that very content you saw on the board that seemed so unachievable. Many things seem unlearnable, but given the right conditions (teacher, home situation, motivation) most people are surprised by the scope of what can be learned by an average person.
        IQunder130 5y ago
        You say this as, in all likelihood, someone with significantly above average abilities.
        ironmagma 5y ago
        Yes, as I’m sure the commenters above me are as well. The context of this being on HN is important, and I’d be a lot less likely to say an arbitrary person could do this project on some other forum.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        The shared delusion of HNer's that they are intellectually superior the rest of humanity because they write computer software continues to astound and infuriate me.
        ironmagma 5y ago
        While that’s definitely frustrating sometimes on HN, that’s nowhere near what has been expressed in this thread (at least not in the comment you replied to).
- willcipriano 5y ago
  > Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability Most of the people on the street? Yes. Most of the people in a history book or at the top of their fields? Not remotely. The author of this is in the second category.
  - astrange 5y ago
    > Most of the people in a history book or at the top of their fields? Not remotely. They mostly got there through the trick of being a good leader and then getting assigned all the credit for their group's work in the history book. > "There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      Your history book assertion seems similar to an assertion regarding "Magic". That being it is simply "hidden work". Stage magicians can spend years conceiving, preparing and rehearsing a "trick". But on stage, when the audience experiences the illusion ... it is magic. Similar to some workplaces stuff. There can be many man hours of time spent propping up repositories, testing, debugging, logging etc etc capabilities in general. And when the shit hits the fan and the capability solves the problem ... magic. Then the audience says "Thanks for solving the problem 10x Dev."
    - dasKrokodil 5y ago
      > "There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex. I see what you did there.
- strangeattractr 5y ago
  >Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability I don't think this is true. People vary wildly in how long it takes them to learn and understand concepts. Some people are better at this and so they achieve more with the same amount of time devoted to a particular endeavour. We can be honest about this without feeling worthless. I could devote my entire life to mathematics and I wouldn't become Euler. Thankfully people vary just as wildly in their affinity for things and that's why we see impressive projects like this. But I aqree with your general premise that seeing other people's endeavours and achievements shouldn't make you feel depressed about how you spend your life.
ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
I prefer this to remain my fear, not to succumb to it being my belief.
avereveard 5y ago
I mean it's not breaking any new ground. It's a great accomplishment for a person because of the amount of time committed, but there isn't any single fundamentally hard piece that's out of reach from an average developer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elwell 5y ago
> Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a priority. In this sentence, the first 'you' is a different person/reality than the second 'you'. Our priorities are integral to our identity.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I think you overestimate what it takes. I've done hard things that took dedication before, for instance I'm a national champion slot car racer, and I've lost over 150lbs. The most important step in accomplishing those things was putting in the time and effort to do them. You also overestimate how smart you need to be to program a game, which I've also done before. What people usually call "talent" is not some innate ability but rather the result of thousands of hours of learning and practicing. Which isn't to say that innate advantages don't exist, but without hard work and dedication they will always be surpassed by someone who put the effort in.

by weerd 5y ago

Don't discount the creativity, intelligence, and dedication it takes to create something like this. Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a priority.

ironmagma 5y ago

Nonsense. Sure, they wouldn’t make this exact game, but neither would the entire rest of the population who is capable of making a project like this. Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability, and if you need to convince yourself of that, think about how fast a computer can do an arbitrary thing versus how fast a human can, or how different a mouse’s musical intellect is from a human’s.

oogabooga123 5y ago
> Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability This is a story we stop telling kids around the end of high school. We tell this story because, as a child, being told you’re dumb can stunt intellectual growth, or being told you’re not physically capable can stop kids from forming a habit of exercising.
- ironmagma 5y ago
  I don’t mean it in the way it’s sometimes expressed as, “you can train anyone to do anything,” I mean it in the sense that the 50%ile capable person is really all things considered, not that different from the 95%ile capable person. The range is just not that high. A person can only accomplish so much in the day and with the animal body we are given. Compare that to a computer, which for many tasks, can accomplish things at a rate 10,000,000 times faster than a human.
  - oogabooga123 5y ago
    > I mean it in the sense that the 50%ile capable person is really all things considered, not that different from the 95%ile capable person. You must be living on a different planet from me. I can kind of see how someone might be tempted to just say “you know what, you’re right” and let you keep on thinking that, though.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      Maybe it’s born out of all these times I’ve seen “10x engineers” hired, or “very senior” managers who will “change everything.” There’s just not that much that one human can do that is fundamentally different from what the median human can, so these hires are almost always overblown.
      - radiator 5y ago
        But how is the hiring of those engineers or managers relevant to the current thread, which is about a project explicitly described: "I am a one-man development team doing everything"?
        ironmagma 5y ago
        Claim: Some people have a higher plane of capability than others, so high that it’s such a difference in scale that it’s a fundamental difference in kind as well. Situation: “We have a broken company. Let’s hire one of these superhumans to fix everything.” Reality: the person hired is the same as everyone else, so they can’t apply their superhuman strength to fix the situation. Lesson: People are more similar than they seem. Situation: Complex project seems to be so involved and difficult that it must have been done by someone possessing powers on a different plane than the rest of us. Reality: The creator spent a very long time learning about the concepts and technologies, then spent a shorter, but still long, time building the project. Lesson: Even those who accomplished great things did not do so effortlessly, and not overnight either. Unlike a god, they did not download the “desire to build great things” program and simply execute it. Judgment of the claim: this appearance of higher kindedness is (mostly) an illusion. Most people are largely the same.
        radiator 5y ago
        My point was, the two situations are very different. It is wrong to make similar conclusions. In your first example, the superhuman cannot fix everything because he has to work with other average humans, who drag him down. In the second case, since he is not forced to work in a team, his superior skills are shown in the result.
  - IQunder130 5y ago
    Let's not pretend someone in the 50th percentile can write a game engine in C. If you're on this website and your day job is programming, your expected IQ is already way north of 100.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      They very much can. Have you ever walked into a classroom and seen the ancient runes left on the board from a more advanced class, wondering how any person can possibly understand all that and wonder whether it was possibly even scribbled as a joke? And then two years later, you realize that you have learned and mastered that very content you saw on the board that seemed so unachievable. Many things seem unlearnable, but given the right conditions (teacher, home situation, motivation) most people are surprised by the scope of what can be learned by an average person.
      - IQunder130 5y ago
        You say this as, in all likelihood, someone with significantly above average abilities.
        ironmagma 5y ago
        Yes, as I’m sure the commenters above me are as well. The context of this being on HN is important, and I’d be a lot less likely to say an arbitrary person could do this project on some other forum.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        The shared delusion of HNer's that they are intellectually superior the rest of humanity because they write computer software continues to astound and infuriate me.
        ironmagma 5y ago
        While that’s definitely frustrating sometimes on HN, that’s nowhere near what has been expressed in this thread (at least not in the comment you replied to).
willcipriano 5y ago
> Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability Most of the people on the street? Yes. Most of the people in a history book or at the top of their fields? Not remotely. The author of this is in the second category.
- astrange 5y ago
  > Most of the people in a history book or at the top of their fields? Not remotely. They mostly got there through the trick of being a good leader and then getting assigned all the credit for their group's work in the history book. > "There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
  - _carbyau_ 5y ago
    Your history book assertion seems similar to an assertion regarding "Magic". That being it is simply "hidden work". Stage magicians can spend years conceiving, preparing and rehearsing a "trick". But on stage, when the audience experiences the illusion ... it is magic. Similar to some workplaces stuff. There can be many man hours of time spent propping up repositories, testing, debugging, logging etc etc capabilities in general. And when the shit hits the fan and the capability solves the problem ... magic. Then the audience says "Thanks for solving the problem 10x Dev."
  - dasKrokodil 5y ago
    > "There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex. I see what you did there.
strangeattractr 5y ago
>Most people are roughly the same in terms of physical and mental capability I don't think this is true. People vary wildly in how long it takes them to learn and understand concepts. Some people are better at this and so they achieve more with the same amount of time devoted to a particular endeavour. We can be honest about this without feeling worthless. I could devote my entire life to mathematics and I wouldn't become Euler. Thankfully people vary just as wildly in their affinity for things and that's why we see impressive projects like this. But I aqree with your general premise that seeing other people's endeavours and achievements shouldn't make you feel depressed about how you spend your life.

ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago

I prefer this to remain my fear, not to succumb to it being my belief.

avereveard 5y ago

I mean it's not breaking any new ground. It's a great accomplishment for a person because of the amount of time committed, but there isn't any single fundamentally hard piece that's out of reach from an average developer.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

elwell 5y ago

> Chances are you actually can't, even if you did make it a priority. In this sentence, the first 'you' is a different person/reality than the second 'you'. Our priorities are integral to our identity.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I think you overestimate what it takes. I've done hard things that took dedication before, for instance I'm a national champion slot car racer, and I've lost over 150lbs. The most important step in accomplishing those things was putting in the time and effort to do them. You also overestimate how smart you need to be to program a game, which I've also done before. What people usually call "talent" is not some innate ability but rather the result of thousands of hours of learning and practicing. Which isn't to say that innate advantages don't exist, but without hard work and dedication they will always be surpassed by someone who put the effort in.