> ...for reasons? Yes. When something's intellectually stimulating you work on it more, that's it. Most game development is a grind. These huge distractions,

> ...for reasons? Yes. When something's intellectually stimulating you work on it more, that's it. Most game development is a grind. These huge distractions, like a scripting backend, well if you spend 100h working on the scripting engine only to spend 1h authoring actual scripts, you still spent 1h authoring scripts those 2 weeks instead of 0h. The game gets delivered sooner even if you spend 10x as long working on it. It's a quintessential misunderstanding about indie game development. HN readers think Jonathan Blow is wasting his time writing a whole new programming language and engine, and that's why his games take 6 years to make. No: his games would take 20 years to make if they weren't intellectually engaging to make. They wouldn't be made at all! It's the same energy as rewriting everything in another programming language. I think this happens at giant companies too, all the time. So called Not Invented Here syndrome: it's as much about laundering open source code as it is about keeping things interesting enough to make the extreme boredom and grind worth it for otherwise smart and healthy people.