7 ms·

You clearly have no idea what's he is all about. His message is very clear: Modern software is crap. It's orders of magnitude slower than it should be, it's bu

You clearly have no idea what's he is all about. His message is very clear: Modern software is crap. It's orders of magnitude slower than it should be, it's buggy, and,yes, bloated. And if you ever used any piece of software today I don't see how you can you not agree with it... He is never advocating NOT using engines, but rather that one can be much better and more efficient developer with just a little bit knowledge of inner workings of an engine. Him "spending a billion years" is nonsense. Handmade Hero is his side-side project which he does once a week for couple hours. You can think of HH as a teaching tool (and not even a good one which he would admit himself im sure) and not 'here is definite guide on how you make an engine yourself'. HH inspired and showed ropes to so many developers, its value is immeasurable.

Ygg2 4y ago
> Modern software is crap. It's orders of magnitude slower than it should be, it's buggy, and,yes, bloated. And, that's where he lost me. Software was always crap. Emacs = Eight Megabytes and constantly swapping. Because even if you squeeze every last cent of performance, someone will have a great idea that will spend each dime you saved and then even add some debt on it. Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software. Why would people use/pay for IDEs over a free text editor. And if you listen to Casey's advice, well, be ready to rewrite your entire stack because almost no software today is willing to do what you need. It's a good advice if you know you'll keep programming for next 120-30000 years. And don't have any competition willing to cut corners.
- dgb23 4y ago
  A game that illustrates that success is tied to performance is factorio. Because it can scale to absurd amounts, while still running on an old labtop. It’s in a genre with notorious performance issues and limitations as well as bugs, but they managed to put in the time and effort. Some of the lessons and solutions are quite educational even. There’s games that are ridiculously simple in comparison let your fans spinning for no reason, grind to a halt or crash. Performance is key here, as it is one of the most limiting factors for _both_ quality and features. Namely the things you can do and how well you can do them is tied to performance. If you are pushing those in any dimension, then you want control.
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    > A game that illustrates that success is tied to performance is factorio. Sure, performance is important if you are making a game with that level of simulation. Most games (or software in general) don't go for that level of simulation/performance. For every Factorio, there are thousands of games that work just as well without that level of simulation. From FPS to trashy mobile games that are just a well disguised slot machine. > There’s games that are ridiculously simple in comparison let your fans spinning for no reason, grind to a halt or crash. Sure and Morrowind used to corrupt your save-files in a horrible manner. It still sold as hot cakes. Even though I remember it being a hog on my resources. Warcraft 3 had an unpatched memory issue people used to extend its programming capabilities, until it turns out said issue could be used for RCE, so Blizzard had to break every existing custom map (like DOTA, not like custom melee map) to fix it. It started several independent genres. ------------ Point is you don't need to think about every ms of execution if you are writing 99.9% of software. Sure you can take some precautions and use some tried and true methods (using immutable trees for editing). But even those come with caveats. You have only so and so complexity budget, will you spend it on features or performance? Almost always the answer is features.
    - dgb23 4y ago
      That’s right but the point I was trying to make that there are whole categories of features you cannot implement if performance doesn’t allow it. I‘m not looking at this from a pure business perspective because it’s not fruitful. We all know that you can produce crap and make a huge buck, because of marketing, dark patterns, manipulation, exploitation, luck and so on. I‘m saying there are good examples where building things from a lower layer up does not only make sense, but is necessary for creative freedom and quality they achieved.
- werner1886 4y ago
  Sure, software of the past wasn't that much better, but relative to hardware it ran on it was much more performant. I think the main point of his view is that with current hardware advances we should be able to have a cake and eat it too. We can have both the features and the speed, but we don't care about that. The only thing that matters is to be first.
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    > The only thing that matters is to be first. To quote a famous asshole: "Real artists ship." Or another "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough™" Network effects are real and being first to (idea) market has its own benefits. Who would have thought, speed of development has its own merits.
    - ratww 4y ago
      It is possible to have the cake and eat, meaning: have performance and be first, as has been shown recently by Casey Muratori himself in a very public debacle. People who care about performance also care about speed of development. The only people saying it's impossible to reconcile both is the people who religiously dismiss the need for performance in modern software.
- ratww 4y ago
  > Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial in achieving new breakthroughs, from Mario's side scrolling, to Carmack's advances in FPSs, to... FFS, we're talking about Unreal 5, this version's selling point is mainly being able to do in realtime what was previously only possible before with offline rendering. Just because there are trash mobile games that make money doesn't mean there isn't money in high-performance software.
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    > Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial In that domain speed is pretty important, but even there it's not as crucial as you might assume. I'm not saying discount it altogether, just good gameplay will trump good performance. They aren't completely unrelated, but there are diminishing returns. What are the titles that need to be that much performant? AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning. That leaves you with Indies, that can use GameMaker/Unity and still get their game out. Sure some AAA use Unreal to their absolute limits. In same way some people develop drivers for embedded hardware. You still don't want to develop games and software in general, the same way those few studios do.
    - sarchertech 4y ago
      > What are the titles that need to be that much performant? Nearly every single game no matter what it looks like makes performance trade offs. Number of enemies on screen, ai search depth, world size, world granularity, whether to allow partial transparency, number of lights, number/complexity of systems etc… Even for something that may look like just another indie side scroller. Sometimes these constraints breed creativity. But if you use game maker/unity, you will find yourself regularly running into performance issues that will require problem solving. The same is true when making an engine, but the problem space is far, far more nuanced than just: some types of games don’t need to worry about performance and so are fine using game maker/unity.
    - 4y ago
rtpg 4y ago
If he’s all about saying modern software is crap, then his opinion isn’t very good imo. I’ll say it again: I think he makes cool stuff! I just don’t think hes right about his judgement here
- werner1886 4y ago
  If you see his points and still disagree that's fair enough
- ratww 4y ago
  > If he’s all about saying modern software is crap, then his opinion isn’t very good imo. That's extremely reductionist. He's saying that modern software is crap regarding performance. And whenever he does complain, he manages to demonstrate it.
  - leshow 4y ago
    What's the conclusion though? Modern software is crap so you shouldnt use any libraries and roll your own implementations of everything? Sounds like a recipe for lots of bugs.
    - ratww 4y ago
      Did you had fun knocking this strawman? Nobody said or implied that you need to eschew libraries and write everything from scratch to achieve performance, and it is frankly a very dishonest way of conducting this conversation. Especially considering that we’re talking about someone (Casey) whose previous job was pretty much selling high-performance libraries (RAD Tools). The claim from the (to be cheeky) “anti-performance” crowd is that it is impossible or unnecessary to extract more performance from modern computers. All that we’re saying is that things are not so black and white. “The conclusion”, if you need one, is that people saying that more performance is impossible or impractical as a knee-jerk response are often wrong.
      - leshow 4y ago
rowanG077 4y ago
So you think UE 5 could be 100+ times faster? For reference that means we would be able to run UE 5 games for the PS5 on the PS3 twice in parallel. I doubt you really even believe what you just wrote.
johnnyanmac 4y ago
Doesn't it strike you as ironic to shoot out a claim as reductionist as "Modern software is crap." and defend the subtleties. But also call out (what I felt was) an obviously hyperbolic statement in response to another hyperbolic statement without regarding the underlying message?

Ygg2 4y ago

> Modern software is crap. It's orders of magnitude slower than it should be, it's buggy, and,yes, bloated. And, that's where he lost me. Software was always crap. Emacs = Eight Megabytes and constantly swapping. Because even if you squeeze every last cent of performance, someone will have a great idea that will spend each dime you saved and then even add some debt on it. Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software. Why would people use/pay for IDEs over a free text editor. And if you listen to Casey's advice, well, be ready to rewrite your entire stack because almost no software today is willing to do what you need. It's a good advice if you know you'll keep programming for next 120-30000 years. And don't have any competition willing to cut corners.

dgb23 4y ago
A game that illustrates that success is tied to performance is factorio. Because it can scale to absurd amounts, while still running on an old labtop. It’s in a genre with notorious performance issues and limitations as well as bugs, but they managed to put in the time and effort. Some of the lessons and solutions are quite educational even. There’s games that are ridiculously simple in comparison let your fans spinning for no reason, grind to a halt or crash. Performance is key here, as it is one of the most limiting factors for _both_ quality and features. Namely the things you can do and how well you can do them is tied to performance. If you are pushing those in any dimension, then you want control.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  > A game that illustrates that success is tied to performance is factorio. Sure, performance is important if you are making a game with that level of simulation. Most games (or software in general) don't go for that level of simulation/performance. For every Factorio, there are thousands of games that work just as well without that level of simulation. From FPS to trashy mobile games that are just a well disguised slot machine. > There’s games that are ridiculously simple in comparison let your fans spinning for no reason, grind to a halt or crash. Sure and Morrowind used to corrupt your save-files in a horrible manner. It still sold as hot cakes. Even though I remember it being a hog on my resources. Warcraft 3 had an unpatched memory issue people used to extend its programming capabilities, until it turns out said issue could be used for RCE, so Blizzard had to break every existing custom map (like DOTA, not like custom melee map) to fix it. It started several independent genres. ------------ Point is you don't need to think about every ms of execution if you are writing 99.9% of software. Sure you can take some precautions and use some tried and true methods (using immutable trees for editing). But even those come with caveats. You have only so and so complexity budget, will you spend it on features or performance? Almost always the answer is features.
  - dgb23 4y ago
    That’s right but the point I was trying to make that there are whole categories of features you cannot implement if performance doesn’t allow it. I‘m not looking at this from a pure business perspective because it’s not fruitful. We all know that you can produce crap and make a huge buck, because of marketing, dark patterns, manipulation, exploitation, luck and so on. I‘m saying there are good examples where building things from a lower layer up does not only make sense, but is necessary for creative freedom and quality they achieved.
werner1886 4y ago
Sure, software of the past wasn't that much better, but relative to hardware it ran on it was much more performant. I think the main point of his view is that with current hardware advances we should be able to have a cake and eat it too. We can have both the features and the speed, but we don't care about that. The only thing that matters is to be first.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  > The only thing that matters is to be first. To quote a famous asshole: "Real artists ship." Or another "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough™" Network effects are real and being first to (idea) market has its own benefits. Who would have thought, speed of development has its own merits.
  - ratww 4y ago
    It is possible to have the cake and eat, meaning: have performance and be first, as has been shown recently by Casey Muratori himself in a very public debacle. People who care about performance also care about speed of development. The only people saying it's impossible to reconcile both is the people who religiously dismiss the need for performance in modern software.
ratww 4y ago
> Performance is never a positive as much as a disqualifying negative. Features are what sell the software Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial in achieving new breakthroughs, from Mario's side scrolling, to Carmack's advances in FPSs, to... FFS, we're talking about Unreal 5, this version's selling point is mainly being able to do in realtime what was previously only possible before with offline rendering. Just because there are trash mobile games that make money doesn't mean there isn't money in high-performance software.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  > Except we're talking about video games, where time and time again performance was crucial In that domain speed is pretty important, but even there it's not as crucial as you might assume. I'm not saying discount it altogether, just good gameplay will trump good performance. They aren't completely unrelated, but there are diminishing returns. What are the titles that need to be that much performant? AAA titles are just rehash/sequels with latest monetization tactics tacked on. On low end you got shitty mobile games that only optimization is user conditioning. That leaves you with Indies, that can use GameMaker/Unity and still get their game out. Sure some AAA use Unreal to their absolute limits. In same way some people develop drivers for embedded hardware. You still don't want to develop games and software in general, the same way those few studios do.
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    > What are the titles that need to be that much performant? Nearly every single game no matter what it looks like makes performance trade offs. Number of enemies on screen, ai search depth, world size, world granularity, whether to allow partial transparency, number of lights, number/complexity of systems etc… Even for something that may look like just another indie side scroller. Sometimes these constraints breed creativity. But if you use game maker/unity, you will find yourself regularly running into performance issues that will require problem solving. The same is true when making an engine, but the problem space is far, far more nuanced than just: some types of games don’t need to worry about performance and so are fine using game maker/unity.
  - 4y ago

rtpg 4y ago

If he’s all about saying modern software is crap, then his opinion isn’t very good imo. I’ll say it again: I think he makes cool stuff! I just don’t think hes right about his judgement here

werner1886 4y ago
If you see his points and still disagree that's fair enough
ratww 4y ago
> If he’s all about saying modern software is crap, then his opinion isn’t very good imo. That's extremely reductionist. He's saying that modern software is crap regarding performance. And whenever he does complain, he manages to demonstrate it.
- leshow 4y ago
  What's the conclusion though? Modern software is crap so you shouldnt use any libraries and roll your own implementations of everything? Sounds like a recipe for lots of bugs.
  - ratww 4y ago
    Did you had fun knocking this strawman? Nobody said or implied that you need to eschew libraries and write everything from scratch to achieve performance, and it is frankly a very dishonest way of conducting this conversation. Especially considering that we’re talking about someone (Casey) whose previous job was pretty much selling high-performance libraries (RAD Tools). The claim from the (to be cheeky) “anti-performance” crowd is that it is impossible or unnecessary to extract more performance from modern computers. All that we’re saying is that things are not so black and white. “The conclusion”, if you need one, is that people saying that more performance is impossible or impractical as a knee-jerk response are often wrong.
    - leshow 4y ago

rowanG077 4y ago

So you think UE 5 could be 100+ times faster? For reference that means we would be able to run UE 5 games for the PS5 on the PS3 twice in parallel. I doubt you really even believe what you just wrote.

johnnyanmac 4y ago

Doesn't it strike you as ironic to shoot out a claim as reductionist as "Modern software is crap." and defend the subtleties. But also call out (what I felt was) an obviously hyperbolic statement in response to another hyperbolic statement without regarding the underlying message?