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Keevon posted:Perhaps you could excuse me for assuming people were angry by the fact that Notch is brought up a disproportionate amount in this thread. It really comes off as some sort of strange nerd jealousy to me. I guess we're all jealous of Rasmus Lerdorf for making PHP too then?
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Apr 8, 2012 20:36
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He's a prolific, public coder who is clearly more interested in getting stuff done than programming "the right way". The fact that he's worshipped as if a god by a large number of people who probably don't know how to program is a pretty good explanation for the sour grapes from his detractors. "No you guys shut up and stop having fun don't you realize this game is insecure and terribly programmed? Of course I won't let you see my game because it isn't perfect yet."
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Apr 8, 2012 20:39
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Internet Janitor posted:He's a prolific, public coder who is clearly more interested in getting stuff done than programming "the right way". The fact that he's worshipped as if a god by a large number of people who probably don't know how to program is a pretty good explanation for the sour grapes from his detractors. I think it's more like "hey this game with graphics that look slightly better than Wolfenstein 3d runs worse than Skyrim on my new PC. It's programmed like poo poo despite how popular it is"
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Apr 8, 2012 20:40
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Internet Janitor posted:He's a prolific, public coder who is clearly more interested in getting stuff done than programming "the right way". The fact that he's worshipped as if a god by a large number of people who probably don't know how to program is a pretty good explanation for the sour grapes from his detractors. Yeah that's pretty fair. In truth he's a mediocre to pretty decent coder that happens to have some good ideas and actually get them down and usable for people to play. I just hate seeing people on either extreme freaking out about it instead of doing something productive.
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Apr 8, 2012 20:47
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Keevon posted:I just hate seeing people on either extreme freaking out about it instead of doing something productive. Clearly you're not familiar with programmers.
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Apr 8, 2012 20:51
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Keevon posted:Perhaps you could excuse me for assuming people were angry by the fact that Notch is brought up a disproportionate amount in this thread.
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Apr 8, 2012 20:54
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Dicky B posted:Really? You sure showed me. Congrats bro.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:10
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It's ok that you said something incorrect and somebody called you out there's no need to be a dick about it "bro".
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Apr 8, 2012 21:18
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Dicky B posted:It's ok that you said something incorrect and somebody called you out there's no need to be a dick about it "bro". What can I say, you are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:23
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This must be what posting in the Minecraft thread is like.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:30
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Well to be fair that is a disproportionately low amount compared to anywhere else on the internet, so...
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Apr 8, 2012 21:33
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Keevon posted:You know maybe instead of being an angry nerd and writing your paper about how poorly notch wrote a multi million dollar game you could try being productive and write your own game but properly and show him whats what. Maybe the one being angry is.... u. 
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Apr 8, 2012 21:33
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Look Around You posted:It's programmed like poo poo despite how popular it is A lot of the hate is that it fundamentally bothers some people that code quality and popularity are not correlated at all.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:39
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Wheany posted:Maybe the one being angry is.... u. Can't argue here, I really gotta work on my anger issues  Chuu posted:A lot of the hate is that it fundamentally bothers some people that code quality and popularity are not correlated at all. Bingo.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:48
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Yes, I'm seething at Notch. This is literally me irl right now, thinking about Notch ->  I'm not at all laughing (or crying) about the code in Minecraft.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:48
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Keevon posted:Yeah that's pretty fair. In truth he's a mediocre to pretty decent coder that happens to have some good ideas and actually get them down and usable for people to play. I just hate seeing people on either extreme freaking out about it instead of doing something productive. I think he's a solidly above-average programmer, with a phenomenal ability to sit down and slam out a functioning prototype of a complex game. Maybe he isn't so good at maintenance, scalability and runtime efficiency, but I must admire his ability to get poo poo done. I've started tons of projects and only a handful of my large endeavors make it far enough to see the light of day. Notch comes up with an idea, thinks about it for a while and then pounds out a buggy tech demo in a 48 hour livestream. Helps that he isn't an rear end in a top hat, too.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:52
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Internet Janitor posted:I think he's a solidly above-average programmer, with a phenomenal ability to sit down and slam out a functioning prototype of a complex game. Maybe he isn't so good at maintenance, scalability and runtime efficiency, but I must admire his ability to get poo poo done. I've started tons of projects and only a handful of my large endeavors make it far enough to see the light of day. Notch comes up with an idea, thinks about it for a while and then pounds out a buggy tech demo in a 48 hour livestream. Agreed here. His focus and ability to get something out the door is far more interesting to me than reading about various flaws in design decisions he made.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:58
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Keevon posted:Agreed here. His focus and ability to get something out the door is far more interesting to me than reading about various flaws in design decisions he made. Right but his focus and ability to get something out the door aren't coding horrors that make me laugh (or cry). Maybe start a 'Programming Traits That Are Awesome' thread where we can talk about how awesome he is at those things, and in here we'll (sometimes) discuss how terribly Minecraft performs on hardware that should be capable of running it smoothly.
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Apr 8, 2012 22:09
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Relevant http://prog21.dadgum.com/21.html
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Apr 8, 2012 22:19
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His game is a very good example though of a quality product. Code quality isn't in fact about how good the code looks, how reliable it is or whether it runs as fast as it could -- it's about whether people would want to use it. In this case, whether they'd want to play the game. Even it (in comparison) runs like rear end and is written badly, the game has still sold millions of copies and is by any means an unabashed success. The fact is that people don't care about the code or the performance being terrible, or at least don't care enough not to play the game. Other developers may look at his code and find it terrible, but it doesn't matter while he's laughing all the way to the bank. That's a serious lesson to consider. People with different background put different importance on different aspects of software. Things that a developer may consider important, such as cleanliness of code, reliability, etc, may but may also not necessarily be what the customer, or the users consider important. Don't get me wrong, I love fully tested, clean and bulletproof code, but there may be cases where making tradeoffs is the right thing to do.
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Apr 8, 2012 22:24
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Chuu posted:A lot of the hate is that it fundamentally bothers some people that code quality and popularity are not correlated at all. There isn't hate, sour grapes, or jealousy here. The point of this thread is to mock bad code. If Minecraft was well-written, it wouldn't get mentioned. The fact that it's popular, inexplicably runs poorly, and has had its technical problems exposed through decompilation makes it an obvious target. Just because Notch made lots of money off of it or that most of his users aren't aware of its design flaws doesn't make it exempt from technical criticism.
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Apr 9, 2012 01:01
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Got to respect his ability I get his game into a playable state for release. I probably would have been stuck trying to make everything really efficient for no real benefit. But really notch, improve the game so a NetBook can play it. Stop putting in dumb things no one likes
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Apr 9, 2012 01:02
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pigdog posted:His game is a very good example though of a quality product. Code quality isn't in fact about how good the code looks, how reliable it is or whether it runs as fast as it could -- it's about whether people would want to use it. In this case, whether they'd want to play the game. Even it (in comparison) runs like rear end and is written badly, the game has still sold millions of copies and is by any means an unabashed success. This is a software engineering horror. 'Fitness for purpose' is not the same thing as quality. Consider PSN, before last April. Millions of people wanted to use it. Sure, Sony was transmitting and storing unencrypted credit card numbers, but nobody cared - information security just wasn't important to their customers. Hell, even after the breach, most people blamed the "hackers" for everything. By your definition, PSN was a very good example of a quality product. Do you think Visa and Mastercard agree with you? Picking on an indie game is low-hanging fruit, but Mojang's success and proven ability to deliver does not change the fact that Minecraft has serious defects.
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Apr 9, 2012 01:23
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Toady posted:There isn't hate, sour grapes, or jealousy here. The point of this thread is to mock bad code. If Minecraft was well-written, it wouldn't get mentioned. The fact that it's popular, inexplicably runs poorly, and has had its technical problems exposed through decompilation makes it an obvious target. Just because Notch made lots of money off of it or that most of his users aren't aware of its design flaws doesn't make it exempt from technical criticism. I don't disagree with most of what you say here, but there are definitely people out there who are very jealous of Notch's success and the code quality of Minecraft is something they cling to because they can't help but think "I could do better than that . . .". Chuu fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Apr 9, 2012 |
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Apr 9, 2012 03:04
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Chuu posted:I don't disagree with most of what you say here, but there are definitely people out there who are very jealous of Notch's success and the code quality of Minecraft is something they cling to. Given the number of Minecraft clones that I've seen on XBLA I have to agree. I've just heard a lot of stories of what he can do, but a lot of his techniques are unnecessarily antiquated and have negative performance results.
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Apr 9, 2012 03:08
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Null Pointer posted:This is a software engineering horror. Those are completely different cases though. Security is an issue that negatively effects the consumer if it's breached, those people would have been better off not having PSN rather than having their information stolen, even if they don't recognize it. Minecraft is inherently a positive experience, either people play and enjoy it or they don't play it. Nobody would be better off if the game didn't exist. The code quality negatively effects the product, but the product is still an overall positive.
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Apr 9, 2012 03:17
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 Nobody here is lamenting that Notch did it first or that we could do it better. It's coded badly. It is a thread about bad code. Therefore, we are talking about it. It's the same thing for PHP. And RMS. Just because someone did something good/cool/popular/etc does not make that product immune to criticism.
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Apr 9, 2012 04:08
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I think anyone who plays minecraft is well aware of how badly it's coded. If anything the frustration is that everyone knows that it could run on a Nintendo 64 if it weren't such a pile.
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Apr 9, 2012 05:43
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Chuu posted:I don't disagree with most of what you say here, but there are definitely people out there who are very jealous of Notch's success and the code quality of Minecraft is something they cling to because they can't help but think "I could do better than that . . .". And none of "those people" appear to be in this thread.
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Apr 9, 2012 05:50
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I bought Minecraft back in the day because of the (apparently implied) promise of continued development that slowly dwindled down to nothing. In hindsight I don't really consider it an amazing or even a great game, actually. It was great to be able to see things come together but it was that experience that defined it for me, once that stopped the attraction was gone. It surprises me that there are people that consider making big money = you've made a quality product, given just how much an effect external factors or even groupthink can have on popularity (see: Power Balance's hologram magic wristbands). That's not to say he hasn't made a game that people enjoy (or that people don't not like), but it's far from perfect and without the buzz that it originally had (*before* the game could even be considered a game) who knows how it would have went. I think the paper Captain Capacitor is throwing together could be interesting from a "design mistakes in rapid-development" perspective, or even purely as an indicator that profitability isn't always closely tied to quality of code (in certain situations). The Gripper fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Apr 9, 2012 |
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Apr 9, 2012 06:15
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NovemberMike posted:Those are completely different cases though. Security is an issue that negatively effects the consumer if it's breached, those people would have been better off not having PSN rather than having their information stolen, even if they don't recognize it. Minecraft is inherently a positive experience, either people play and enjoy it or they don't play it. Nobody would be better off if the game didn't exist. Did you look at the griefing video?
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Apr 9, 2012 06:21
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quote:Nobody here is lamenting that Notch did it first or that we could do it better. It's coded badly. It is a thread about bad code. Therefore, we are talking about it. It's the same thing for PHP. And RMS. Just because someone did something good/cool/popular/etc does not make that product immune to criticism. quote:'Fitness for purpose' is not the same thing as quality. Consider PSN, before last April. Millions of people wanted to use it. Sure, Sony was transmitting and storing unencrypted credit card numbers, but nobody cared - information security just wasn't important to their customers. Hell, even after the breach, most people blamed the "hackers" for everything. By your definition, PSN was a very good example of a quality product. Do you think Visa and Mastercard agree with you? In any case, if we were to say PSN was one of the many gaming and communication networks available and there was real competition, then the quality would include top notch security, as security of credit card information would certainly be a huge factor in choosing a gaming network. Hell, it's hard to imagine a situation where security over handling credit card information wouldn't be. If you were to build a network like PSN and you couldn't make it produce value, because Visa and Mastercard would deny you and/or the customers would sue the crap out of you, then no matter how gold-plated your code is, you are doing it wrong. On the other hand, performance of a game like Minecraft is provenly a smaller factor than fellow developers may think.
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Apr 9, 2012 06:30
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pigdog posted:Absolutely, but the criticisms here don't really matter. edit: I also don't care about people saying that the ends justify the means, fwiw. While I could see the topic of ostensibly bad code that takes shortcuts in ways that improve efficiency in producing a working product being interesting, people aren't specifically making that argument, it's just "Well he made money so I guess that means his code is good" which ignores a billion other factors that are outside the scope of discussion here. het fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Apr 9, 2012 |
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Apr 9, 2012 06:35
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Look Around You posted:
Welp, right now most people are talking about notch and not posting code. I've seen and/or read about a few bad engineering decisions in the minecraft code and I wouldn't mind seeing more code or writeups on the engine or netcode or whatever, but having people pile on notch without posting either is just boring.
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Apr 9, 2012 06:35
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Besides, the code snippets I've posted have been parts of working programs. That pretty much means it's an even bigger horror, because you normally don't see code unless you have to maintain it. Which means there is something or someone out there that relies on its functionality. So any changes you make must not break anything.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:02
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Vanadium posted:Welp, right now most people are talking about notch and not posting code. I've seen and/or read about a few bad engineering decisions in the minecraft code and I wouldn't mind seeing more code or writeups on the engine or netcode or whatever, but having people pile on notch without posting either is just boring. People are talking about Notch because there was a screenshot of code that he was writing for his new game. That code was pretty objectively horrible. Then like 5 random people showed up out of nowhere to defend his honor or some poo poo by calling by saying everyone else is just jealous or what the gently caress ever. Because clearly if something's successful it's automatically perfect, right? Nobody was "piling on" him, he's legitimately made poor design decisions and his implementation of his design is pretty terrible as well. We were talking about the code and design of his games. I don't recall a single person saying "why is this so popular"; instead, we were talking about what made his code and design decisions terrible.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:08
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quote:Because clearly if something's successful it's automatically perfect, right? Ultimately you don't code something like this for coding's own sake. Succeeding in writing software that people would buy is a higher level goal than writing perfect code. The latter is ultimately the means to attain the former.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:27
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pigdog posted:From Notch's perspective, counterintuitively, yes. It proves, with cold hard cash to back it up, that the faults in his game and coding style are relatively insignificant. But this argument is like saying "Well I'm the owner of a candy company. We make the cheapest shittiest candy you can buy, but because it's so cheap, children buy it even though it tastes bad, because they can't tell the difference!" Yes, you have money, but you don't have a good product in any sense of the word. Plus; once again, this is the coding horrors thread, not the "Unsuccessful products" thread. The code is bad, so we focus on that.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:30
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That's correct: if people buy your cheap and lovely candy and you're making profit, then you must be doing something right. McDonalds is a pretty successful company, wouldn't you agree? You're not running the factory for the candy (instead you could just go to a store and buy any candy you personally like), but as with any enterprise you're running it for profits. But sorry for the derail.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:39
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I'm really curious to see how the port of minecraft to the 360 will run.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:41
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