5 ms·
Let me hijack this with a hate story about my wife and minigolf games. Back in 1996 she thought maybe she needed a hobby. She was a housewife and we didn’t hav
by tomcam 2y ago
Let me hijack this with a hate story about my wife and minigolf games.
Back in 1996 she thought maybe she needed a hobby. She was a housewife and we didn’t have any children yet. She said maybe she could do a game. At the time I was working in Microsoft C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Classes framework, building Windows apps. She had never programmed a language more challenging than Turbo Pascal.
When she asked how long it would take to even get started, I estimated about 18 months to learn C++ properly, another six months to learn Microsoft foundation classes. The six months after that to learn the windows API if she worked really hard at it. At the time I thought maybe there was a place in the Windows game market for a mini golf game.
She took less than a week to create a working, bug-free prototype, but then lost interest.
I hate people like that! Everything takes forever for me to learn.
Luckily she blessed me with a passel of pretty much bug-free and absolutely hilarious children, so I’m giving her a pass.
- smabie 2y agoIf you're laser focused on a end product then learning can happen remarkably quickly.
- tomcam 2y agoYeah no. I am an atrociously slow learner.
- ok_dad 2y ago> bug-free children I know you didn't mean anything by it, and it was a pretty funny joke, but children with bugs are pretty cool as well :)
- al_borland 2y agoIs this the difference between learning and doing? You were looking at how long it would take to learn all the foundational technologies, once that was done, she could start to code the game. Where she took the on-the-job-training approach. Work on the project, run into a problem, learn enough to solve said problem. Repeat until done. I’m usually the learn before I start type as well, though I find it doesn’t really work for me in practice. It ends up becoming a form of procrastination.
- tomcam 2y agoShe says much the same thing as you. I appear to be unable to learn something without going to first principles.
- darby_nine 2y ago> She took less than a week to create a working, bug-free prototype, but then lost interest. This is pretty common, no? Same reason why everyone thinks AI will change development: people mistake the initial time cost of building an initial prototype for being representative of the total cost of making the thing people actually demand (which mostly never happens).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]