[gameprogrammer] Re: Blue Collar Coding

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 08:32:24AM -0500, Bob Pendleton wrote:

> Here is a great essay. It should make a lot of people rethink what they
> know about programming:
> 
> Programming as if Performance Mattered
> http://www.dadgum.com/james/performance.html

Hmmm ... it seems to be based on the old claim that the hardware is
"fast enough".  I don't believe this is the case, or that it will ever
be the case.  Demonstrating that 1985's problems are solvable in no time
today is only half the truth, IMHO.  There are new problems today,
undreamt of in 1985, that still require full processing power available.

E.g. it's nice to be able to decode one TGA file in 15 ms - but what if
you need to decode 10's or 100's of them while the user is waiting (like
in gqview or similar apps)?

I also wonder what his claim that even games don't need more power is
based on.  Sure, with all those new GPU's and some competence in driving
them we can say that the graphics is no longer the problem it used to
be.  But how about AI?  We all know that even half-decent AI can eat
significant amount of processing power.  Pathfinder alone can break your
neck performance-wise in some kinds of games.

I'm no optimization freak, I'm afraid I can't optimize all that well for
that matter since I haven't done any appreciable optimizing work in last
couple of years.  But I can see that different apps have different
demands on speed of execution, safety (whatever that means) etc.  So
sweeping claims like "everybody should focus on safety now since
everything's fast enough" are quite far from truth IMHO.

Or am I missing something?

        latimerius



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