entwine

Actually got myself a job coding DS&Wii back in the day with my DS streaming tile engine

Damn that's sick. Landing a real job from homebrew work is the coolest backstory for a game developer. I've got a couple of hb projects I'm proud of, but in the world of Unity and Unreal I don't see it as being a particularly in-demand skill set.

...not that I'd want to work for a game dev company in 2025 lol

What on earth did you run on a DS and windows? I’m curious!

A homebrew game, of course! Well, more like a game engine demo. Making game engines is more fun than making games.

I'm not sure why you find it so hard to believe, as it's pretty straight-forward to build a game on top of APIs like

void DrawRectangle(...);
void DrawSprite(...);

Then implement them differently on each target platform.

BTW we used hard coded in memory structures, not serialising stuff, you’d have a hard time doing that perfectly well on the DS IMO.

You mean embedded binary data? That's still serialization, except you're using the compiler as your serializer. Modern serialization frameworks usually have a DSL that mimics C struct declarations, and it's not a coincidence. Look up any zero-copy serialization tool and you'll find that they're all basically trying to accomplish the same thing: load a binary blob directly into a native C struct, but do it portably (which embedded binary data is not)

As for understanding your data, you need to know the size of the int on your system to set up the infamous INT32 to begin with!

Nah, that's what int32_t is for. The people who built the toolchain did that for me.

Have you never heard of the concept of serialization? It's weird for you to bring up the Nintendo DS and not be familiar with that, as it's a very important topic in game development. Outside of game development, it's used a lot in network code. Even javascript has ArrayBuffer.

Well cite me one then

I've personally built small homebrew projects that run on both Nintendo DS and Windows/Linux. Is that really so hard to imagine? As long as you design proper abstractions, it's pretty straightforward.

Generally speaking, the best way to write optimal code is to understand your data first. You can't do that if you don't even know what format your data is in!

If there are, none have managed to make a strong case for themselves yet. Systemd has proven itself to be a huge boon for sysadmins, especially at scale. These kind of anti-systemd efforts usually come from stubborn old timers who probably aren't even employed in a capacity where they'd have to work with an init system at all (maybe they were fired for having obsolete skills?).

Yes I'm being a dick, but these people are also usually dicks, so fuck em.

I think the general path to enlightenment looks like this (in order of experience):

1. Learn about patterns and try to apply all of them all the time
2. Don't use any patterns ever, and just go with a "lightweight architecture"
3. Realize that both extremes are wrong, and focus on finding appropriate middle ground in each situation using your past experiences (aka, be an engineer rather than a code monkey)

Eventually, you'll end up "rediscovering" some parts of SOLID on your own, applying them appropriately, and not even realize it.

Generally, the larger the code base and/or team (which are usually correlated), the more that strict patterns and "best practices" can have a positive impact. Sometimes you need them because those patterns help wrangle complexity, other times it's because they help limit the amount of damage incompetent teammates can do.

But regardless, I want to point something out:

the more these doubts are increasing and leading me to believe that most of it is just dogma that has gone far beyond its initial motivations and goals and is now just a mindless OOP circlejerk.

This attitude is a problem. It's an attitude of ignorance, and it's an easy hole to fall into, but difficult to get out of. Nobody is "circlejerking OOP". You're making up a strawman to disregard something you failed at (eg successful application of SOLID principles). Instead, perform some introspection and try to analyze why you didn't like it without emotional language. Imagine you're writing a postmortem for an audience of colleagues.

I'm not saying to use SOLID principles, but drop that attitude. You don't want to end up like those annoying guys who discovered their first native programming language, followed a Vulkan tutorial, and now act like they're on the forefront of human endeavor because they imported a GLTF model into their "game engine" using assimp...

A better attitude will make you a better engineer in the long run :)

As someone trying to gain weight, I'd love me some 2500 calorie potato chips

I know right? If I was there, I would've started with the guy behind green helmet. A quick leg sweep followed by an elbow to the chest, to make sure he stays down.

After that, green helmet would likely turn his sights on me, but I'd be ready for him. A roundhouse to the shiny green dome would daze him, and as his back is turned I'd get him in a head lock, and do a rapid choke-out before the others swarmed me.

At this point, the others will have noticed and will be oinking at me to get down, pointing their weapons menacingly. What they don't realize is that I'm a Diamond II in fortnite. Guns. don't. scare. me. As they're trying to menace me, I'll bob-and-weave towards the nearest pig, grab his barrel. "Better luck next time, pig" I'll say before hitting him in the nose with the butt of the gun.

Once he's out cold, the rest will begin to fire at me. I'll use the unconscious pig's body as a riot shield, charging at the group and tackling the rest to the ground. It'll be so quick they'll all stumble, and as they're trying to regain their footing, I'll bob and weave once more, performing a serpent strike into their throats. This will buy me a few precious seconds to channel my inner ki and roast them all with a solid kamehameha.

Finally, my fallen comrade will stand, the rest of the protestors will come to his aid, and once he's been secured, everyone will clap. But I won't smile. Not while there are still fascist pigs left to roast.

Yeah, it seems the same as saying the 2020 US presidential election results are contested... which is technically true, but it'd be misleading to frame it that way.

That's never going to happen because people love that shit. Politicians love it because it's an easy moral win, and constituents love it because it reinforces their world view (the person I voted for is actually doing something good, it must mean my opinions are right).

I think the real solution is education, so people understand the underlying problem. A politician could say that we should imprison all adult males to protect the children (citing the overwhelming amount of child abuse committed by men), but even the smoothest of brains can see how stupid that is.

Idk if it's possible to educate people about privacy at the scale that's needed to permanently prevent these kinds of stupid laws... It's probably hopeless, at least while Gen X and older are still alive and voting.

But when Newsom runs for president, he'll be able to say he protected the children! Why don't you want to protect the children, Fluffy Kitty Cat?? Why do you revel in the abuse and exploitation of children???? HOW MANY SUFFERING CHILDREN DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR BASEMENT TORTURE DUNGEON????????

This is not going to work for its intended purpose for obvious reasons, but you make a good point about moving the burden from websites to OS vendors. That could hopefully make life easier for everyone. It's what I think should have happened with the GDPR cookie banner nonsense: require website operators to respect a browser-level "functional cookies only" option, but with the same harsh penalties for those that ignore it.

But the concerning part to me is that eventually, some desperate attention whoring politician is going to take the "protect the children" angle in the future by introducing a bill that updates this to require more invasive spying at the OS level to verify ages more accurately. And of course, the tech giants will eagerly oblige.

Just call it something else 🤷