4 ms·

"Stop looking for a developer." -- this is an interesting trend that is slowly, but surely, gaining traction. It's really taking hold in the indie game world, a

by city41 13y ago

"Stop looking for a developer." -- this is an interesting trend that is slowly, but surely, gaining traction. It's really taking hold in the indie game world, a lot of people now make games with GameMaker, Stencyl, and the like and often don't need a developer. It makes a lot of sense that this will take place in the website and mobile app world too. I wonder what developers will be doing in 5 years, when most/all CRUD apps can be built with drag and drop.

seivan 13y ago
A lot of those games aren't actually quality work. Especially because they tend to settle with out of the box settings instead of having the ability to customise it. Though a good artist can hide it through good artwork and sound.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Gamemaker (and probably the rest) do have the ability to optimize it. If people use it or not is their choice. To make an interesting (or even ok) game with those tools, you will be writing tons of code. As people do (read the forums). Even in 'educational' game makers like Gamesalad, you can see that people are taxing the system by 'writing' (drag & drop in this case) quite complex routines which do things (like raycasting) which Gamesalad is definitely never made for.
- city41 13y ago
  Spelunky, Hotline Miami and Super Crate Box were all made with Game Maker. All very successful, critically acclaimed titles. Granted, it's hard to know how much GML (Game Maker's programming language) was used. But just the fact that they were made in Game Maker alone is a pretty strong testament that these tools are really coming into their own.
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    But why? Serious question. It's a programming language and a library for (mainly) 2d stuff. It's cross platform and has some graphical tools. But I believe good games have tons of GML in them. So what makes them different from the many other 2D game frameworks & programming languages besides that Gamemaker looks easier. I do welcome it's success though; more tools is better for game makers.
tluyben2 13y ago
This is nothing new and has been around since people started to make usable software for computer systems. The idea has been tried to death with countless software writing tools. MS DOS Dbase tools on top of dbase, written in clipper or what not to make CRUD applications by non programmers. There are generating tools from before that generating compile CRUD from just 'a business person definitions'. I have seen presentations from countless products like Filemaker, MS Access, Foxpro etc claiming that boring CRUD is gone and no programmers are needed anymore for application building. When I was younger, one of the product managers for the Dutch product SDW told me that programming business software was something of the past as business people could just input 'how the app should work' and the app would be automatically built. Outsystems have claimed this, as do Longjump and web based systems. They all have something in common; they work for some cases, if you want more you have a problem. You CAN do it, but it's hard and the resulting 'code' (usually visual programming or 4GL) will usually be bad. Ohyeah, and you're still programming. Worse than you would have with actual developers from the start. Note that most of them start out as simple systems, like this SteveApp. That's nice; it serves a purpose. But when you get users, people will request features and these feature will, in the end, require a full fledged programming language. So now you have non programmers creating an app up to a point which they still get and for more they'll hire you. They did a bit of 'programming' though in the built in language, which was made easy (which usually translates to visual and/or 'very much like English), so not very terse and often not very well written. Now you have 'code' like this http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6134596/Screenshots/uo079r9j~q3b.png http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6134596/Screenshots/uo079... and you only have to fix some extra features :)
- sorich87 13y ago
  I agree that the code generated by most software writing tools is horrible. That's why SteveApp doesn't even try to generate code in any programming language (unless you consider HTML a programming language of course). The trick used by SteveApp is to generate dynamic HTML views which have the ability to save the data over a standard server API. Dynamically generating a markup language is easier, and I think it can be done successfully with a software writing tool.
  - 13y ago
sorich87 13y ago
There are so much problems in the World that software can help solve, and there are not enough developers to solve them. The time developers spend writing code for CRUD apps would be better spent on other, more important things (more complex apps, user experience, etc). By automating the coding of trivial CRUD apps, time and money will be saved and reallocated to more challenging problems. Also, from a developer point of view, writing CRUD apps is boring. :)

by city41 13y ago

seivan 13y ago

A lot of those games aren't actually quality work. Especially because they tend to settle with out of the box settings instead of having the ability to customise it. Though a good artist can hide it through good artwork and sound.

tluyben2 13y ago
Gamemaker (and probably the rest) do have the ability to optimize it. If people use it or not is their choice. To make an interesting (or even ok) game with those tools, you will be writing tons of code. As people do (read the forums). Even in 'educational' game makers like Gamesalad, you can see that people are taxing the system by 'writing' (drag & drop in this case) quite complex routines which do things (like raycasting) which Gamesalad is definitely never made for.
city41 13y ago
Spelunky, Hotline Miami and Super Crate Box were all made with Game Maker. All very successful, critically acclaimed titles. Granted, it's hard to know how much GML (Game Maker's programming language) was used. But just the fact that they were made in Game Maker alone is a pretty strong testament that these tools are really coming into their own.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  But why? Serious question. It's a programming language and a library for (mainly) 2d stuff. It's cross platform and has some graphical tools. But I believe good games have tons of GML in them. So what makes them different from the many other 2D game frameworks & programming languages besides that Gamemaker looks easier. I do welcome it's success though; more tools is better for game makers.

tluyben2 13y ago

This is nothing new and has been around since people started to make usable software for computer systems. The idea has been tried to death with countless software writing tools. MS DOS Dbase tools on top of dbase, written in clipper or what not to make CRUD applications by non programmers. There are generating tools from before that generating compile CRUD from just 'a business person definitions'. I have seen presentations from countless products like Filemaker, MS Access, Foxpro etc claiming that boring CRUD is gone and no programmers are needed anymore for application building. When I was younger, one of the product managers for the Dutch product SDW told me that programming business software was something of the past as business people could just input 'how the app should work' and the app would be automatically built. Outsystems have claimed this, as do Longjump and web based systems. They all have something in common; they work for some cases, if you want more you have a problem. You CAN do it, but it's hard and the resulting 'code' (usually visual programming or 4GL) will usually be bad. Ohyeah, and you're still programming. Worse than you would have with actual developers from the start. Note that most of them start out as simple systems, like this SteveApp. That's nice; it serves a purpose. But when you get users, people will request features and these feature will, in the end, require a full fledged programming language. So now you have non programmers creating an app up to a point which they still get and for more they'll hire you. They did a bit of 'programming' though in the built in language, which was made easy (which usually translates to visual and/or 'very much like English), so not very terse and often not very well written. Now you have 'code' like this http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6134596/Screenshots/uo079r9j~q3b.png http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6134596/Screenshots/uo079... and you only have to fix some extra features :)

sorich87 13y ago
I agree that the code generated by most software writing tools is horrible. That's why SteveApp doesn't even try to generate code in any programming language (unless you consider HTML a programming language of course). The trick used by SteveApp is to generate dynamic HTML views which have the ability to save the data over a standard server API. Dynamically generating a markup language is easier, and I think it can be done successfully with a software writing tool.
- 13y ago

sorich87 13y ago

There are so much problems in the World that software can help solve, and there are not enough developers to solve them. The time developers spend writing code for CRUD apps would be better spent on other, more important things (more complex apps, user experience, etc). By automating the coding of trivial CRUD apps, time and money will be saved and reallocated to more challenging problems. Also, from a developer point of view, writing CRUD apps is boring. :)