Culture
Whining, and Tech Art
A recent Facebook discussion prompted some discussion about how many programmers (especially in games) have awful development environments. So many studios don’t how to properly use (and the benefits of) source control. We work with proprietary or handicapped tools because we work with some frankensteined engine where standard tools...
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80/20 sometimes- Good Enough vs. Perfection
The 80/20 rule is generally a good one to understand. 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. So how does it apply to software, and to product development in general? 80% test coverage. Higher coverage is notoriously difficult to achieve. Fix the top 20% of your...
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“Make it work”
I know a managers that use ‘make it work’ as an implicit demand, knowing they’re asking you to do the impossible with inadequate resources and forcing you to deal with it- as if it isn’t they’re responsibility. I know developers that are all too eager to say they’ll ‘make...
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Why I will never develop for a big company again
I had this post written up for a long time, and it was much more ranty. But now I’ll just give you some facts (all of which are public) and let you fill in the blanks: Your bonus is based on “Target Bonus %” x (“Your Performance” + “Company...
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The Tech Artist’s Creed
Repost of my most recent from altdevblogaday: http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/08/26/the-tech-artists-creed Last month we started a thread on tech-artists.org about creating a tech artist’s creed. After several weeks of back and forth, we finally came up with something we could all agree upon. Here it is: I am a Tech Artist, Every day...
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Bored People Quit (I did!)
If you read one long blog article this year, make it this one: Rands in Repose’s Bored People Quit. It is one of the most important blog posts I’ve read in a long time, and right on the money. If you’ve ever worked a shitty professional job (especially programming),...
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The Open Source community can be mean
I’ve talked a bit about my problems with OSS as an outsider. Martijn Faassen wrote a great post about his problems with it from the inside: How to Handle Ideas. It’s an informative, lucid post about improving the ways the open source community receives ideas and criticisms, written by...
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The Importance of Vision, 3 of 3
As a small break while I finish my vacation, I’m going to publish my recent post at AltDevBlogADay in three parts. View it there in its entirety. Not every studio has these problems (I know because I’ve argued with you about this). And I dare say that studios that don’t have...
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The Importance of Vision, 2 of 3
As a small break while I finish my vacation, I’m going to publish my recent post at AltDevBlogADay in three parts. View it there in its entirety. So how come with Tools and Pipeline we don’t think the same way? There is no Tools Director, so we end up with disparate...
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The Importance of Vision, 1 of 3
As a small break while I finish my vacation, I’m going to publish my recent post at AltDevBlogADay in three parts. View it there in its entirety. Every ambitious creative endeavor has at its helm a single individual who is responsible for providing the vision for its development. In...
