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by _zagj 341 days ago
Look, for whatever reason, he's not good at finishing what he starts: https://www.destructoid.com/he-worked-on-it-for-three-years-...

How much of that is due to the programming practices he espouses, I'm not sure. Ironically, if he went all-in on OOP with Smalltalk, I could see the super productivity that environment provides actually making it harder for him to finish anything, given how much it facilitates prototyping and wheel-reinvention. You see this with Pharo, where they rewrite the class browser (and other tools) every 2-3 years.

But his track record doesn't support the reputation he's built for himself.

> for game projects

That's the problem. Casey holds up a small problem domain, like AAA games, where OOP's overhead (even C++'s OOP) may genuinely pose a real performance problem, and suggests that it's representative of software as a whole; as if vtables are the reason VisualStudio takes minutes to load today vs. seconds 20 years ago.
2 comments
zaphos 341 days ago
The article you linked indicates the reason for him not finishing is specifically that he didn't like his game design, which seems orthogonal to coding practices.

He appears to have shipped middleware projects for RAD, and other contract work where he was not in charge of game design.

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_zagj 341 days ago
RAD was what, 15, 20 years ago? What has he released, in terms of proprietary or open source products, since then? Not just games, I mean ANYTHING. Refterm, and... what else? It's not like he was busy with his MSFT or RAD dayjob during this period.
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MikeCampo 341 days ago
He created Meow Hash somewhat recently and open sourced that. It's not a huge project but it's very useful. A lot of his time goes toward education, his personal projects and contract programming. Not every programmer is dedicated to releasing their own open source or commercial software. I'd bet most programmers don't. Using this as a metric to claim that he has a bad coding approach is ridiculous and laughable. Especially using Handmade Hero as an example... It really reveals your ignorance.

Also, since you care so much, let's see what you've released, smart guy. Preferably code so that we can see how talented you are.

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_zagj 341 days ago
> Also, since you care so much, let's see what you've released, smart guy. Preferably code so that we can see how talented you are.

I'm not the one telling everyone they're doing everything wrong, and did it not occur to you that my perception of what his output ought to have been over that timeframe (especially for someone who rates his own abilities as highly as he does) is informed by my own?

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Nimitz14 336 days ago
Think the microsoft terminal saga shows a pretty clear track record.
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