Blog of Rob Galanakis (@robgalanakis)

Culture

Learning a programming language by reading a manual is like learning a language by reading a dictionary

A verbal language is more than its grammar and vocabulary.  A programming language is much more than its syntax and keywords. Mastering a language gives you new insights into how people think and changes the way you think.  You cannot learn this through words, you learn this through interacting...

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Game Studio Takeover Nightmare Impossible

There’s a sub-genre of reality television that contains shows where experts come into a failing business and implement changes to fix things.  Three of the most well known are Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, Robert Irvine’s Restaurant Impossible, and Tabatha’s Salon Takeover (totally awesome show, btw).  I’ve wondered what it’d...

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Why server programmers don’t need ruthlessness

There were some (expected) disagreements to my post about why tech artists need ruthlessness.  Perhaps I can help explain my opinion by providing another one about something I know little enough about to run the risk of mischaracterizations: server programmers, and how they don’t need ruthlessness. (Please mind the...

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Why Tech Artists must have “ruthlessness”

ruthlessness:  pitilessness; mercilessness characterized by a lack of pity . In my GDC2011 IGDA SIG video interview, I told Bill Crosbie that Tech Artists much possess ‘ruthlessness.’  For those of you who want more info, or (like me) hate watching videos, I thought I should give some further explanation....

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Code metrics, requiring a culture of quality

Last time I went over how adhering to things like code quality metrics that are objective and ‘scientific’ is the key to creating and sustaining a strong codebase.  The difficulty comes with actually implementing that process and behavior wherever you work.  There is no shortage of obstacles: 1.  Convoluted...

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Code metrics, the only ‘right constant’

I wrote recently about the experience of running a code analysis tool on a codebase and hinted at the difficulties involved with refactoring the problems.  There are far smarter people than me who have given much more thought to the technical problems and strategies involved.  I want to explore,...

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Code quality metrics are king

If you want to induce a bout of anger and depression, run a tool like NDepend on your codebase (or Resharper’s code analysis, or VS2010’s code metrics, or any other similar tool).  I would guess, if you’re a competent developer who knows what ‘good code’ looks like, you’ll find...

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The right kind of consistency

Code consistency seems like a straightforward topic.  And it is, when you consider just the code.  But you have to consider the team behind the code and the long term evolution of the codebase.  The best architects will enforce consistency in the right area at the right time. The...

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A lead shouldn’t lead like lead.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do with my new role at CCP.  Most of these I’ve been able to do (or advocate strongly for) to some degree even as a non-Lead but they were never supported enough by the Leads and never took hold....

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What I look for in a studio

The job hunt that landed me at CCP was an interesting experience.  It was long and difficult- but fun, because I knew exactly the type of job I wanted and type of studio I wanted to work at.  The job I wanted was a Lead Tech Art/Tech Art Director...

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