That last one is incredibly true. The thing is, you make the documentation and it's good, you have it. Maybe 1 year later, or 2 years later, or 5 years later, or 10 years later someone asks you how it works, and you've got this impeccable documentation and you look like a king.
- replies
- 0
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 0
John Carmack gave a massive interview on the Lex Fridman podcast a while back, and I listened through much of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I845O57ZSy4
One thing he talks a lot about is how over the years he's come to realize that building good systems and having a good strategy overall is more important than having individual clever algorithms.
When you're dealing with stuff that's going to be a base for work that continues indefinitely, that's absolutely true to an extent that people in the moment often don't realize.
Building something that's super efficient and clever is fine if you're done the project in 18 months and never work on this again, but a lot of companies take that base that's built in one game and use it as the basis for their next 15 games, because that's good business and good game development.
I've experience this myself, where the stuff I can help others maintain is worth its weight in gold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I845O57ZSy4
One thing he talks a lot about is how over the years he's come to realize that building good systems and having a good strategy overall is more important than having individual clever algorithms.
When you're dealing with stuff that's going to be a base for work that continues indefinitely, that's absolutely true to an extent that people in the moment often don't realize.
Building something that's super efficient and clever is fine if you're done the project in 18 months and never work on this again, but a lot of companies take that base that's built in one game and use it as the basis for their next 15 games, because that's good business and good game development.
I've experience this myself, where the stuff I can help others maintain is worth its weight in gold.