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by wly_cdgr 1409 days ago
This blog post is good, but is pretty average stuff for a real professional. You are just used to reading webdev tip&trick postlets from third-rate hacks
1 comments

No, this is definitely high-quality. Like the person you're responding to, far higher quality than a lot of professional work I've seen. This is very clearly someone who cares about the end result, not just about getting it done, and a lot of work I've seen in my career, the person cares more about just getting it done, than they do about getting it done right.

I'd also say it's about having the skill to do this: as other posters note, there are multiple competencies on display in that post; graphics, coding, testing, etc. Each of those takes time to hone. I've worked with any number of people that are not honing their skills, because when they get stuck or hit problems, will not take the time to dig into them and really understand exactly what problem they hit, why they hit it, and how whatever language/tool/system they're working with works. They'll guess until something appears to work, and then move on.

I'd put the detail in this blog post up there with Friday Factorio Facts, and that is also another top-notch game.

If your professional environment is just full of people working at or even above the level here, you should know you have it good. And I think they do exist: I've definitely joined places where there are just lots of incredible people; in hindsight I wish I'd done a better job of learning and listening, when I had that…

I believe it all boils down to being an artist working on a project you're passionate about. If I was forced to work on someone else's project that I don't really care about just to make a living, I'd probably simply execute my tasks to make sure I reach the expectations, and that's it. I'd strive to finish my tasks fast to have more time doing something I actually care about, be it a side project, hobby, family time or even just a walk in a park. However, when I'm a one-man orchestra doing a project where my main motivation is to see that project being done, it's actually getting hard to restrain myself from going into all those interesting rabbit holes that could easily postpone the completion of that project almost indefinitely. I find it hard not to hone my skills and dig into stuff to understand it in that setting.

(of course, when I was young it was easy for me to get passionate not about the project itself, but on mere technical aspects of work I was doing for someone else; this kind of motivation, however, doesn't last very long unless you're able to change your job often to keep it fresh and challenging)

What I deeply regret is that I struggle with writing about stuff I'm doing. There's a lot of interesting knowledge one acquires from such projects, but it often gets almost lost and only really lives on as a vague "experience" you can indirectly apply to your future projects. I would like to have my own experiences written down in such a neat way like in this post, not just for publicity, but also for my own personal needs when I want to go back to something I've done years ago. Usually, my attempts end with an unfinished, incomplete document that gets so out of date before completion that it's best to throw it out and start over, which of course doesn't happen until the memory of what I've done becomes foggy enough to make reminding myself what to write about a challenge on its own :( As it is right now, I'd struggle to describe the vast majority of my past passion work if anyone asked me about it; I'd need plenty of time and some "detective work" to reconstruct my memories.

Your whole wall of text is in response to a fantasy strawman position I have in no way expressed