>One weekend in late August 1996, I wrote a 2D physics simulation which later became the basis of the vehicle system in the eventually popular game "Grand Theft Auto" aka "GTA".
I don't mean to be... judgemental, but if you had the talent to go something like this, why devolve on the remake? One could think that a person with your level of skill would be one of the main vanguard for hand coding. Again, I don't want to be too judgemental, as I am not a great programmer and use assisted tools when planning and designing personal apps, but I am just curious.
Why needlessly do extra work when it's easier than ever before to modernize what is already made? Why would he want to be a vanguard for "hand coding"?
[−]DonaldPShimoda · 2026-10-10 Sat 19:26 UTC ·
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Sometimes the reward lies in the doing, not in the done.
Seems the author chose option 2 and focused on the article instead.
[−]DonaldPShimoda · 2026-10-10 Sat 20:28 UTC ·
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So often it feels like people lose track of the actual conversation happening in the comments in favor of posting a cute quip for points...
This thread originated with one poster expressing disappointment that someone of the author's acumen would choose this path, and another poster asked why the author (or someone of their skills) should have chosen a different path. I weighed in with an answer to that question.
Obviously the author did not see things the way I suggested, or else the conversation would not have happened.
If hand coding doesn't matter, why have your ai write a lengthy explanation on the implementation and architecture of some feature? You don't think this juxtaposition is a bit odd?
I never said manual coding doesn't matter and I don't think anything Kerr wrote implies that he thinks that either. Nor does using LLMs to code mean the implementation and architecture doesn't matter.
I've been a developer for not nearly as long as the author but long enough that at some point it felt like I was writing the same code and same abstractions over and over again and sometimes a new novel problem would reinvigorate my love of programming but today I'm happy to let an LLM write the tedious code while I give the more fun high level architectural direction and when reviewing the code sometimes I'll give it a nudge in a different direction. I suspect the author has written code like the 2d car physics many times over. Just my 2 cents.
I don't mean to be... judgemental, but if you had the talent to go something like this, why devolve on the remake? One could think that a person with your level of skill would be one of the main vanguard for hand coding. Again, I don't want to be too judgemental, as I am not a great programmer and use assisted tools when planning and designing personal apps, but I am just curious.
I am the author of this thing, and I find your comment very amusing. ;-)
Seems the author chose option 2 and focused on the article instead.
This thread originated with one poster expressing disappointment that someone of the author's acumen would choose this path, and another poster asked why the author (or someone of their skills) should have chosen a different path. I weighed in with an answer to that question.
Obviously the author did not see things the way I suggested, or else the conversation would not have happened.