Video game programmer
I’ve long favoured self-documenting code over code comments. But I’ve recently reconsidered the issue. After years of dealing with self-documenting code I’m beginning to see problems. With hindsight I’m less sure that self-documenting code is always the best way to go.
I recently read a paper on confirmation bias: the tendency to focus on information that corroborates theories and dismiss information that contradicts them. It explained a general problem that I’ve noticed with many scientific studies (particularly in the field of software development) but I hadn’t been able to identify.
When my Nan recently died, my parents got an education in the cost of dying. For example, if you want a cremation, you have to get forms signed by two doctors. Each signature will cost you about £60. My parents were told that this was due to the case of Doctor Shipman. A little research showed this to be a simplification.
A post on one of the game developer newsgroups suggested that I got myself LinkedIn. It’s only when you do something like this that you realise just how many contacts you have in the business.
I was half watching some movie; I don’t recall what it was. There was a father and son chat going on regurgitating the usual cliches, “you have to live your own life,” “you only have one life to live,” or something like that. It got me thinking about the different way we live our lives in the real and virtual worlds.
Reading an entry on James Bach’s blog reminded me of the best tester I ever worked with. It got me thinking about how he did it.
My recent study of the defects that slipped through reviews but were found during testing show an interesting pattern: they were almost all due to timing issues. Could a change of programming style reduce those errors?
I got a message from the IEEE. It appears that we’re finally going to be getting a standard mark to look for when buying green computers.
Since reading about the PSP, I have continued to collect statistics. However, last week I decided to collect additional statistics related the the practice of reviewing code before compilation. The goal of this practice is to catch 100% of your compile errors before compilation by reading through the code. I was unsure about the wisdom of putting this responsibility on the programmer so I decided to gather some statistics to see if that doubt was justified.
A comment on digg about an article on the lack of role playing in the modern RPG led me to this great little indie game.