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Revisiting: Jonathan Blow devtalk "we don't expect software to work anymore"

Can't wait when ai is advanced enough to QA code and fix it faster than human devs even realize there was ever an error.

The advances in AI is legit scary. Not just for the above but as a driving force in creativity. Artists around the world should worry.

The other day I used Bing image generator to create a BMW with Lamborghini aesthetics and the results were rather interesting.
 

GHG

Member
Boeing 787 max problem is not software like they claim it's hardware they tried to put a fuel efficient engine on an old design which made the airplane's balance all fucked up

Nope, it was that change in design (which meant the angle of attack range is different to other planes) in combination with the software that caused all of the issues.

It was the ultimately MCAS system that caused all the problems.


https://aviationweek.com/shownews/d...pletes-review-new-737-max-angle-attack-sensor
 

Roni

Gold Member
We had a meeting from the head of software at my work where he flat out said that studies show more features equals more money/sales. We can fix any problems after release but regular major release days need to happen bi-yearly with new functionality pack every quarter.
Close to release, we ignore bugs to make sure as many features are finished so the boxes can be checked.
Any documentation is an afterthought and commented code is practically nonexistent.
A simple one line fix for a bug took a week of me and a colleague to figure out where exactly to insert it.
Agile development is stuuupid.
I'm a Quality Assurance Specialist for a retailer in my country. I've been begging for standardized documentation for years and it would help the QA department so much...

QA is a complicated area in IT as a whole, but lack of documentation is the number one driver for bad quality in software: a test is meaningless unless you have an expectation to compare with reality and the expectation is the documentation...
 
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Nope, it was that change in design (which meant the angle of attack range is different to other planes) in combination with the software that caused all of the issues.

It was the ultimately MCAS system that caused all the problems.


https://aviationweek.com/shownews/d...pletes-review-new-737-max-angle-attack-sensor
They made a hardware change and add software to try to correct it.
But that is not the problem; they HID the existence of both the hardware and software to lie about not needing pilots to be retrained. To make the plane more attractive to buy. And they hid their existence by not putting it in the manual. So when things went wrong the pilot didn't know what to do because the problem isn't suppose to exist.
 

StueyDuck

Member
That is not Agile at all.
This is like the "that's not real communism" arguments.

In theory it's not agile. But it's what the method has ended up being.

The point of agile is for reactionary quick development. But it's ended up becoming "ah that's good enough, we'll push the rest for now".
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
The important takeaway from interest is that it's not a secret subliminal form of unconscious oppression
There's nothing secret or subliminal about social norms dictating 'interest' though.
The ratios of 99:1 in gender dominated fields aren't born out of innate interests, we're often taught what to avoid before we learn how to speak.

I don't think Blow is wrong about certain innate differences existing, but online social media discourse is incapable of any nuance, or arguments in good faith. Its just echo chambers celebrating or crucifying views.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
There's nothing secret or subliminal about social norms dictating 'interest' though.
The ratios of 99:1 in gender dominated fields aren't born out of innate interests, we're often taught what to avoid before we learn how to speak.

I don't think Blow is wrong about certain innate differences existing, but online social media discourse is incapable of any nuance, or arguments in good faith. It’s just echo chambers celebrating or crucifying views.
Before we learn how to speak, we’re conditioned toward or away from computer science and engineering professions? Fantastical premise there.

People tend to look for ways to downplay sex differences for good reasons, as historically they were used to as a basis to discriminate against women. We should be mindful when discussing it. However, let's not invent nonsense like babies being conditioned for particular professions straight out of the womb.

There is a lot of support and encouragement for women in CS and engineering in the US these days, which is great, as there absolutely should be. In a free and just society, boys and girls should both be able to pursue their dreams and aspirations freely. There are obviously still inroads that need to be made to ensure that freedom both in the US and abroad.

Sex differences also do exist, though, which have a non-trivial influence on what men and women are interested in pursuing. Right now around 20% of CS grads in the US are women, and that ratio has decreased for women significantly in recent history, down from 40% and 30%, despite social advocacy for women in STEM ramping up significantly over the same period.

Are infant girls subject to anti-computer science conditioning that they weren't subjected to 10 years ago, or 20 years ago? Or should we also acknowledge other factors beyond oppression, like women making their own choices about what they want to pursue in life, and that being okay too whether it's in STEM or something else? Women have agency.
 
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ahtlas7

Member
TUs2Fu4.jpg


Look at that Use trajectory.
Question: is there a law that dictates: as an organized system increases in complexity so to does it‘s inclination toward breakdown increase. Or, is that just me being emotional?
 

Greirat

Member
Whenever I open Windows Task Manager and see the dozens and dozens of processes running that I don't even want running, I think of this talk. Intel and AMD give us more powerful hardware, then Microsoft immediately uses up the resources with more background junk. The right click menu in Windows is now slower than it was 20 years ago. Blow is 100% right here.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
This cannot be overstated enough. ChatGPT is a ridiculously useful tool in programming but it's going to make people severely lazy. I'm already forcing myself to not just feed problems into it and copy paste the results as a default method of coding - now, I'm not fresh out of Uni, I understand what the code is doing and where it is and isn't going to work, most of the time. But it probably shouldn't be the first thing I do when I'm approaching a problem.
I was saying the same to a co-worker the other day arguing about AI, I told him that there will be a seniority problem in the industry ten years from now and internet will be complaining about how a senior programmer 10 years ago was immensely more skillful due to being formed without any magic tool, so when hard issues appear in the code we'll be the ones to be called because the new seniors won't be able to figure out some issues we are used to solve manually now.

I'm not from a computer science background, I'm self taught since forever and can easily see my limitations whenever "designing or programming stuff" isn't the task, like setting up a Linux server or some other server stuff, my field is frontend web development so I haven't needed to touch those tasks and some of them like setting up a project environment require sometimes fixing something that purer engineers have more experience with.

I guess the same will happen to new developers but with normal code problems due to a lack of experience solving them manually, the difference is that once in my domain, I'm very proficient and can put some good stuff, but these new programmers in the domain they are expect to do great, they will be lacking some essential skills we got by having absolute agency of the whole process and training our brains to think logically in a way errors are minimum and trackable.

Also, reading code takes like 10x more time than writing it, it's very hard to understand code from other people, having to read a generated code and then fixing an error or making small adjustments seem like a productivity nightmare.
 

StueyDuck

Member
What is this myth that programmers in the past didn't have bugs in their code or that their games came out perfect ?
did anyone actually say that, people are saying the quality of development has dipped tremendously and people are discerning their reasoning as to why that would be happening. that is all
 
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did anyone actually say that or do you just have a chip on your shoulder, people are saying the quality of development has dipped tremendously and people are discerning their reasoning as to why that would be happening. that is all
I don’t think it has actually dipped. I think it’s always been bad, forever. There is good software now, and bad software, just as there was at the beginning of software.
 

StueyDuck

Member
I don’t think it has actually dipped. I think it’s always been bad, forever. There is good software now, and bad software, just as there was at the beginning of software.
i can't speak on gamings behalf, i have never worked in the gaming sector, but in the industry of development as a whole there has been a shift to output = better than quality = better, this obviously isn't a blanket statement for all development across the globe, but the way development is generally looked at and expected today is SaaS, release now, fix later. it wasn't like that before.

Some studios/development houses thrive in those conditions, but it's become clear that it doesn't suit all situations. It also allows for (as someone else posted an expose earlier) juniors to essentially be hired to not really do much work or work considered "easy". Project leads are pushed to get as much output out there as possible , so why put the new guy on a new system he has never seen before on anything marginally difficult if you need to see results by the end of the month. What in my experience ends up happening is the senior devs end up with more work and also end up having to train and help the new junior devs who don't really have a deep enough knowledge of the code behind that they should have. Whereas the onboarding process could have been alot smoother if there wasn't so much pressure to produce a new live release so often. Again this doesn't represent every company ever, just a trend i personally have notice over the coming up to 14 years now in the industry.
 
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i can't speak on gamings behalf, i have never worked in the gaming sector, but in the industry of development as a whole there has been a shift to output = better than quality = better, this obviously isn't a blanket statement for all development across the globe, but the way development is generally looked at and expected today is SaaS, release now, fix later. it wasn't like that before.

Some studios/development houses thrive in those conditions, but it's become clear that it doesn't suit all situations. It also allows for (as someone else posted an expose earlier) juniors to essentially be hired to not really do much work or work considered "easy". Project leads are pushed to get as much output out there as possible , so why put the new guy on a new system he has never seen before on anything marginally difficult if you need to see results by the end of the month. What in my experience ends up happening is the senior devs end up with more work and also end up having to train and help the new junior devs who don't really have a deep enough knowledge of the code behind that they should have. Whereas the onboarding process could have been alot smoother if there wasn't so much pressure to produce a new live release so often. Again this doesn't represent every company ever, just a trend i personally have notice over the coming up to 14 years now in the industry.
Yeah I’m a software dude too, prob 20 years in the game. Feels like same shit different day to me, just different flavours of shit. It’s always been about output, just like anything where you’re producing something.
I don’t know for sure, but my guess is quality metrics have been the same forever. Something like 3/4 of projects failing since time began. New people coming in is always hard, forever.
 

nush

Member
There's a blog post that made the rounds recently...




Big corporations have trouble getting things done. Too much bureaucracy and bloat. But they're capturing a big chunk of the talent in the industry thanks to superior compensation.

Basically this blog has just discovered Bullshit Jobs.

Well worth a read as it's all by design and not even related exclusively to the tech industries.

 

StueyDuck

Member
Yeah I’m a software dude too, prob 20 years in the game. Feels like same shit different day to me, just different flavours of shit. It’s always been about output, just like anything where you’re producing something.
I don’t know for sure, but my guess is quality metrics have been the same forever. Something like 3/4 of projects failing since time began. New people coming in is always hard, forever.
i mean i wouldn't discount your experiences, everyone has their own. It sucks that either way we are experiencing this, Things should have gotten better.

don't get me started about how awful onboarding has always been even without the added pressure from higher ups for output, plus source documentation, what is that, companies hate that.
 
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i mean i wouldn't discount your experiences, everyone has their own. It sucks that either way we are experiencing this, Things should have gotten better.

don't get me started about how awful onboarding has always been even without the added pressure from higher ups for output, plus source documentation, what is that, companies hate that.
Totally agree. Feel me, I’m frustrated too. As a lead, I get lots of pressure to deliver with my team of 12. Generally I love delivering and it frustrates me when people just don’t show up enough/care enough - I just want people to have fun, have a laugh, and show up every day for the team, get that trust.
Maybe I’ve just given over to being cynical that it’s just a high pressure trade where money is on the line for people above my pay grade, for better or worse, and to just fight the battles I can fight.

I get the bozo theory of Jobs, not in the dumb way where people think he’s talking about diversity, but in the way where if you get people in who don’t care, or have the wrong mindset, or are protective of their jobs, they multiply and you’ll never get them out, and quality and productivity will drop. HR where I’m at is a complete joke, as is management. We literally have a DevOps AND and a tech ops department because the tech ops guys started the dev ops team so they could control it, effectively creative two tech ops departments with different remits without direct context of project work instead of, you know, empowering the people who actually have the context and getting the work done. Now you’ve got two packs of idiots who have work queues you have to wait for who come in to do things they don’t fully understand in the context of the entire solution, because they are protecting their own jobs. They spread the bullshit about cowboy devs and being dangerous, while slowing everything down and making bad mistakes. But their roots are so deep now they’re never getting out.
 
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Give the full version or the highlight version a watch and let me know your thoughts.
Good video, and good points being made. That is concerning. It also reminds me of this video. I've been a fan of Blow since Braid, but I became a fan of him for more than his games after seeing this interview from 10 years ago:




It brings up a lot of memories of how no one in the press would strongly criticize Microsoft for their original intentions with Xbox One, and how so many in the press and the industry were so quick to blame "entitled" gamers for their valid concerns. Along with a few other issues from roughly the same time, this was one more thing that solidified the "us vs them" mentality that gaming journalists created, driving many people to the independent gaming press offered by you tube.

I also have to wonder if Cliffy B is still using his Xbox One to watch all his cable television. I'm guessing not.
 
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i mean i wouldn't discount your experiences, everyone has their own. It sucks that either way we are experiencing this, Things should have gotten better.

don't get me started about how awful onboarding has always been even without the added pressure from higher ups for output, plus source documentation, what is that, companies hate that.
Oh yeah, and onboarding lol.
Literally every job I’ve been on has basically not had any onboarding, or if they’ve had it, it’s been counterproductive or useless. You basically need the skill of just, how do I get the info I need to get shit done, and how do I find the people who know and make them tell me.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Before we learn how to speak, we’re conditioned toward or away from computer science and engineering professions?
Come on now - you even acknowledged the real point later in the post, there's need for this.
But to your point at the end - I don't know the data today, I suspect things have changed (for the better too), and continue to change, but the general debate (especially what JB was referring to) was around existing working/educated pool, which has already gone through their social-upbringing over past 2-4 decades.

And this isn't just about STEM or Women - Men are equally being steered away from particular subjects, arguably even more aggressively so (depending on where you grew up too of course). While I witnessed 99:1 ratio in STEM in my home-country in favour of Men for most of 80ies and 90ies, I also saw the reverse in social-science focused studies for women. That kind of overwhelming majority preferences just don't get explained away with personal choice, even if you are objectively more qualified for what you picked.

Sex differences also do exist, though, which have a non-trivial influence on what men and women are interested in pursuing.
I agree, I just disagree with the size of influence. And given how deeply integrated social norms are into everything we do, it's impossible to really decouple that influence from anyone's personal choice or even just interest.

Or should we also acknowledge other factors beyond oppression, like women making their own choices about what they want to pursue in life, and that being okay too whether it's in STEM or something else? Women have agency.
Well - I could be an ass and point out that the age most people make choices about their education future, most developed countries legally don't recognise individuals having the mental.... 'capacity' for such agency. Something about being easily influenced and such... :p
Again - applies to both genders though.
 

SLESS

Member
AI will make most of the software soon anyway.
This could happen, and I wonder will it mean even less innovation in the future or more? Can AI have the imagination that conceived jumps in gaming like Doom or Diablo for example?

I miss the 90s 😂
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Can't wait when ai is advanced enough to QA code and fix it faster than human devs even realize there was ever an error.
It is interesting that you think this is how it will go. AI testing and fixing the code humans write. I find it interesting for a few reasons.

First, QA has been a dying discipline for a while now. With the move to agile methodologies and MVP philosophies traditional testers have been largely seen as unnecessary, which is one of the reasons they're scrambling to unionize. They're trying to hold on to jobs that are largely redundant. Software already tests more pre-release code than humans do. Most independent software companies I speak with when looking to outsource work don't even have a QA function because they believe their agile processes deliver high enough quality without it.

Second, QA doesn't actually fix code because that isn't typically its function. QA sends code back to origin for rework when defects are found. That's why it is seen as inefficient in an agile environment. The goal is to push forward, hence why testing is automated and run while code is being developed. A lot of organizations see code-based unit testing by developers as sufficient when paired with automated UI/front-end testing. We can argue whether it's sufficient, but it doesn't matter since manual testers are dying out regardless.

Third, AI is more likely to be writing the code than testing it. Software development has become such a relatively simple activity since the turn of the century. High level programming languages paired with runtime frameworks have abstracted the complexity of driving computer systems away from developers. One of the questions I ask developers when I interview them is the difference between stack and heap memory. Almost none know because they don't have to care. Coding today is commodity work more like assembling a puzzle than anything, which is what is making it so easy for GPT to do it. If a robot writes the code then chances are mistakes will be low enough that it won't need a QA cycle.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
What is this myth that programmers in the past didn't have bugs in their code or that their games came out perfect ?
There were never illusions that code was perfect. In my decades of writing code I never once worked on a system that didn't have a defect backlog. It came down to whether the defects were critical enough to prevent release. Some were never fixed.

I've met plenty of arrogant developers over the years who believed that their code never had defects. They were all humbled by a critical bug at one time or another.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
The issue I think is that there's virtually no wholly bespoke-written programs anymore; everyone uses libraries and various sorts of "black-box" middleware solutions to make their work match up in all regards to current standards, particularly in function and UI.

The premise of using these is that you save a whole bunch of time and effort by taking the solution "off the shelf", but its all predicated on these things operating flawlessly within the desired parameters -which may not always be the case.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Most independent software companies I speak with when looking to outsource work don't even have a QA function because they believe their agile processes deliver high enough quality without it.
I could spend a long time ranting how wrong most companies are on that - but it's kinda moot, that's literally the point of JBs video.
I will say though that the more established tech organizations don't employ QA Testing - but QA Engineering, which does help.

If a robot writes the code then chances are mistakes will be low enough that it won't need a QA cycle.
LLMs are more similar to humans than robots when it comes to making mistakes. I've tried ChatGPT in test-driven development (ie - proper iterative workflow like a human programmer, with test & deploy cycles) and it makes mistakes all the time. It does learn and fix, and can eventually iterate to a functioning result (assuming the tests are good) but those testing guardrails are the 'only' guarantee it may get there.
Now sure, we'll get better models over time - but unless paradigm of how they solve problems is completely changed, their ability to test will be just as important as writing code.

Also the whole other part is that for writing inefficient but functional code we don't really need AIs, but AIs should eventually be able to reason about performance and optimization (and all those low-level details your fresh-grads no longer care about) much better than a human could. The next generation of compilers will likely make current stuff look like abacuses.
 
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Killer8

Member
The consumer has essentially given permission for shoddy software quality to permeate in the way it has. There are numerous technical and bureaucratic reasons behind the curtains for why the quality of software is declining, but i'd be more interested in knowing what affect it actually has on sales. I'd guess: zilch. Blow's thought of "we don't expect software to work anymore" stops just short of "- but we still buy it anyway", so as interesting as his analysis is, in a way it doesn't even really matter to delve into the why.

Companies know they can consistently get away with just releasing a broken product and then patching later. If the backlash gets too heated, all it takes is a nicely formatted apology letter on Twitter to the tune of "we can do better", and all seems to be forgiven in a matter of months. Future sales will barely be put in jeapordy. Before pre-ordering the next hyped up game, the consumer doesn't even stop and think about what a disaster the last one was. When the next Boeing plane enters service, will anyone even be thinking of the 737 MAX?

There is even the strange phenomenon, seen with Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, where releasing a busted product and then later patching it to the standard it should've been can almost net additional kudos for an developer. One part because the game is now in a good place, and the other part because the developer is viewed as somehow heroic for going back to correct their mistake. A psychological analysis on why that happens would be interesting.
 

Fredrik

Member
There is even the strange phenomenon, seen with Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, where releasing a busted product and then later patching it to the standard it should've been can almost net additional kudos for an developer. One part because the game is now in a good place, and the other part because the developer is viewed as somehow heroic for going back to correct their mistake. A psychological analysis on why that happens would be interesting.
They deserve the praise.

Hello Games has iterated No Man’s Sky far beyond what they first promised, I think they’re up at about 30 big game changing updates now, and every update is still free.

Most devs who add anything substantial put that in expansions we have to pay for.
 

OCASM

Banned
The ratios of 99:1 in gender dominated fields aren't born out of innate interests, we're often taught what to avoid before we learn how to speak.
They are born out of innate interests. It's modern society that teaches and pushes for the opposite, at its own detriment.

I agree, I just disagree with the size of influence. And given how deeply integrated social norms are into everything we do, it's impossible to really decouple that influence from anyone's personal choice or even just interest.
These differences can be observed in babies only a few days old. No societal influence there.
 
An appreciation post:

OP, thanks for sharing this talk. I have been getting back into listening to Jonathan Blow again. It's refreshing to hear his breakdown on games and development.

There's a blog post that made the rounds recently...

EviLore, thanks for sharing this as well! Interesting critic on agile development and how it fails (when it fails). People cater to the measurement of their work rather than the real work they are supposed to do. (Going after the grade rather than the knowledge the grade was supposed to represent. Something I pulled from Robert Pirsig.)
 

01011001

Banned
ironically this is true for this very forum as well.

ever since the last big update, I can't remember when it was, many things are either worse or wonky.

for example, when I'm on my phone, and I want to upload an image, I sometimes can't click directly on the "+ Image" button on the bottom left, but instead have to click slightly to the left of it for it to work.

bug2heqy.gif


this is reproduceable on multiple browsers too.


then, before the big update you could edit a post, and insert a Quote into the edit by clicking the usual "Insert Quotes" button on the bottom of the page. it wasn't always convenient as that button wasn't below your post edit textbox, but it's still better than the alternative that you now have to do.
which is adding the quote to a new post, changing to the simple text editor, then copying the whole quote including the [ quote ] brackets of course, and then pasting it into the post you're editing.


another issue on this site is that some mobile keyboards produce weird errors like adding multiple lines in-between the text.
I think that was an issue with either the Samsung keyboard or the Microsoft keyboard.
 
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acidagfc

Member
As some who works in the tech support of an enterprise-level software - shit's on fire, yo.

New features are pushed into new realeases, while the old ones are only fixed when a really large client finds that a workaround is just not good enough.

I would love for our devs to stop adding new stuff for like a year and focus in fixing old bugs, but the business demands growth and therefore pushes new features halfbaked.

And this is in software that can cost millions to large customers.
TF do you expect for your 60 bucks entertainmebt?
 
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There's a blog post that made the rounds recently...




Big corporations have trouble getting things done. Too much bureaucracy and bloat. But they're capturing a big chunk of the talent in the industry thanks to superior compensation.
These fuckin shitheads. This article pisses me off.

I’m in a government position, as a lead, coming off of being at an agency. The agency was the opposite, too much pressure end, but government is filled with these arseholes who don’t want to work.

I proudly have a decent body count of people I’ve managed to get out of the team and the organisation.

The author though, is at a place where everyone is doing everything wrong, and not actually thinking about the intent of the exercises and the goals, and clearly has a horrible manager.
 
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I'm a senior product manager and it's all true.

Sales sells shit that doesn't exist to customers who aren't all that interested, customer success throws feature requests over the wall to get customers off their backs and blame product or engineering for churn, product is told to talk to the market but then we get burned when we aren't touting new features constantly, oh and big customers are constantly threatening to cancel it we don't complete some big-ass list of features no one else wants.

So what happens? Product and engineering pull all nighters to build shit features quickly (with no staff for QA by the way) and everyone acts surprised when shit doesn't work.

It's all because the VC sets unrealistic goals. Don't ever become a Product Manager, kids: I've never made the bank they tell you you'll make and it's not worth the sacrifices.
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
ironically this is true for this very forum as well.

ever since the last big update, I can't remember when it was, many things are either worse or wonky.

for example, when I'm on my phone, and I want to upload an image, I sometimes can't click directly on the "+ Image" button on the bottom left, but instead have to click slightly to the left of it for it to work.

bug2heqy.gif


this is reproduceable on multiple browsers too.


then, before the big update you could edit a post, and insert a Quote into the edit by clicking the usual "Insert Quotes" button on the bottom of the page. it wasn't always convenient as that button wasn't below your post edit textbox, but it's still better than the alternative that you now have to do.
which is adding the quote to a new post, changing to the simple text editor, then copying the whole quote including the [ quote ] brackets of course, and then pasting it into the post you're editing.


another issue on this site is that some mobile keyboards produce weird errors like adding multiple lines in-between the text.
I think that was an issue with either the Samsung keyboard or the Microsoft keyboard.

A quick look into dev tools reveals that the hit box for the file input element is smaller than the div element that serves as the UI element / button.

It's really amateurish. Why use div as fake button? You can't even focus on that element. You can’t tab to it. This is basic stuff.
 
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Ronin_7

Member
Writing software is hard.

I write alot of software alone, team is small we work with some very big clients & many times I'm doing work for two of them.

C#, T-SQL, VB etc.

It's a mess to get everything talking correctly across the board & make new features work, alone many times and with pressure to close the tickets 😂

Not surprised everything is fucked beyond repair elsewhere, mine still running great so far 😂
 
Think Blow is a try hard overrated hack high on the smell of his own farts. Any accurate insight he may have accidentally had was broken clock syndrome.
He’s a brilliant programmer and incredible game dev, but he overcomplicates everything and loves to do so.

I’ve watched him taking days to implement a new feature in his own game engine that’s the most basic thing in any other prefab engine (like support for colored point lights or a particle system).

And that engine is not just his custom engine, but also made in his own programming language. (Jai)

He’s working on a pretty simple puzzle game and he’s taking his time. Just fucking around and streaming or playing Tarkov or whatever.

If he would’ve used Unity or Unreal he could’ve shipped 10x more games, but like he said: those engines are designed to fit for any game, not just his game. So he makes everything from scratch and it is watertight under the hood, but noone actually cares about that except for Jon Blow himself.

He’s a weird dude, but I respect him.
 
He’s a brilliant programmer and incredible game dev, but he overcomplicates everything and loves to do so.

I’ve watched him taking days to implement a new feature in his own game engine that’s the most basic thing in any other prefab engine (like support for colored point lights or a particle system).

And that engine is not just his custom engine, but also made in his own programming language. (Jai)

He’s working on a pretty simple puzzle game and he’s taking his time. Just fucking around and streaming or playing Tarkov or whatever.

If he would’ve used Unity or Unreal he could’ve shipped 10x more games, but like he said: those engines are designed to fit for any game, not just his game. So he makes everything from scratch and it is watertight under the hood, but noone actually cares about that except for Jon Blow himself.

He’s a weird dude, but I respect him.
He’s a quintessential dev in a lot of ways. “Behold! The magnificent engineering behind this feature!!” And no one wants the feature or cares, but we do know you wasted a year on it and that just burned fuck loads of money for something that will suck money to maintain and no one will buy.
 

Sentenza

Member
AI will make most of the software soon anyway.
Even assuming this will happen anytime soon, it remains a danger to a degree.
While this would quickly start to revert the "efficiency" problem on the short term, getting more and more used to automated system will probably lead to an even-quicker loss of expertise on the human side.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Latest example:




Diablo 4 can't add extra stash tabs for players because when you're in the vicinity of another player their entire stash is loaded into your memory.
 
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