trønderen wrote:

When you have to go outside the language itself to defend it, then I start questioning the language qualities.

By 'qualities' do you mean syntax? Or something else?

I second this. Python scripts are easy enough to write and quick enough to execute that we can iteratively automate stuff that would not otherwise be automated. Because Python libraries are available to do almost everything, we now have a series of Python-based solutions where previously we had C, C++, Java and even Pascal.

When I sit in front of a bash shell prompt I feel the entire computer spread out in front of me. When I sit in front of a Powershell prompt I feel like I'm peeking through a tiny hole into a big confusing mess. The first Microsoft PC I used had 640K of memory and twin floppy disks. It felt like an amusing toy next to the Sun Microsystems workstation on my desk. Forty years later it still f*****g does!

I found this very hard to read.

I'm 61 and like a lot of you I used to work into the wee small hours and get up mid-morning. During lockdown I needed to impose some discipline on my life and started going to bed at 09:00 and getting up at 05:30 - every day of the week. Occasional nocturnal cat issues aside (who knew?) I now sleep better than I have ever done in my life. I wish I had done this years ago.

Awesome rabbit-hole :)

This describes my entire life.

Yesterday I edited some code and noticed that the last edit was done 22 years ago to the day - by me. And yes, the comments were useful.

I came to UE4 (Unreal Engine 4) with over 20 years programming experience, mostly using C in graphics, CAD (Computer Aided Design) and mapping applications. I was the first person in our organisation to use UE4. It was my job to assess it's suitability as a new development platform in addition to the two CAD applications we already use: MicroStation and AutoCAD. We liked having access to the source code and that UE4 is multi-platform. The UE4 documentation also looked better than the Unity documentation. The bad news is that starting from scratch it took me about three years to become semi-competent with UE4. The difficulty is that game engines cover such a large number of largely separate areas, each of which could easily (and often do) have a dedicated specialist. When I started (with no game engine experience) I was unaware that these disciplines even existed! The good news is that the second person on the team got up to speed in about three months, and the third person was productive almost straight away. Issues that took me weeks to partially understand could be answered immediately. As someone previously mentioned, the hardest part is understanding their object model. There are dozens of ways a game engine could be put together and UE4 have gone down one path. It's neither particularly good or particularly bad - it's just the one they have chosen and the one you have to learn. Another take-away lesson is that programming is no more than 20% of the overall activity. MRA (Modelling, Rigging, Animation), UI (User Interface), packaging, level design, shaders, PBR (Physically Based Rendering) Materials, audio, physics, QA are all huge topics in themselves. The third lesson (a hard one) is that there is a lot of bad information out there on the internets. There are hundreds of "How to get started in UE4/UE5" videos and articles and each one spawns dozens of forum posts similar to "I followed your video and am stuck with X". The majority of these end with "I tried Y and Z - they might work for you". Not inspiring! TL;DR if you are joining an existing team - go for it. (You can track the evolution of one of our projects in these articles)

I got mine

The Unicomp Model M doesn't have USB ports but the one I'm using now is 14 years old and still going strong. I have six in total (two still boxed) and expect to be buried with one.

I'm working on a 17,000 line Python script now and it doesn't feel particularly unwieldy.

The problem with this is that you can't really decide if it was bug free until years later. If my '100 lines' written today causes someone to spend four days fixing something in two years, then my average drops to 25 lines for that day.

Not cynical. Entirely realistic.

My dirty little secret is that quite often I won't write functions unless that code is used exactly the same way in at least three other places. And if an existing function doesn't do exactly what I want it to I will create a new version rather than add a new parameter. Or (even worse) I will inline a copy of the entire (existing) function and modify it in the main body of my code. Why do I do this? Because after thousands of code walk-throughs I know it is easier for someone to understand a linear block of code. Every meaningful function call (i.e. a function call that changes something rather than just return something) or call-back reduces the comprehensibility of code.

What were we talking about?

There should be a name for this.

Seriously - doesn't everyone do this?

Asday wrote:

your worthless throwaway hobby project

Oh such truth!

You are not a hopeless Luddite. You are probably one of the three people left in the World that actually just does 'programming' without frameworks or AI or some other load of nonsense.