undefined | Better HN

0 pointslatch9y ago0 comments

To me, what's impressive about Notch is the speed at which he can put a decent prototype together. What's also impressive is the experience he's collected.

If I work at it, sure, in X years, maybe I can be in the same ballpark as him. But today, if you wanted a game prototype or full game built, Notch would be worth more than 10x me. Just think of the experience he's collected.

If we're talking in the abstract, sure, maybe he isn't 1000x the programmer I am. I'm not really sure there's a huge value in looking at it that way though.

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mikulas_florek9y ago

I do not think Notch have more programming experience than thousands of other programmers in the industry. He worked on games professionally only for 9 years. Minecraft is not that technologically great, it's just a fun game to play and very famous.

squeaky-clean9y ago

> Minecraft is not that technologically great, it's just a fun game to play and very famous.

But that's the point. Kids aren't going out of their way to buy complex technical achievements. They want a fun game. They don't care if it's 30 mil lines of beautiful C or 200k lines of ugly Java.

> I do not think Notch have more programming experience than thousands of other programmers in the industry.

Where and how you use that experience matters. Notch regularly enters game jams where he makes and completes a game in 24-72 hours. How many people here could do that? How many "average" programmers could do that? Maybe I could knock out a simple web service with a REST API quicker than Notch, but if your goal is "I need a simple game prototype by the end of the weekend", Notch is definitely the 10x option.

mikulas_florek9y ago

Yes, I guess you are right in a way. One can become 10x game jam programmer simply by attending a lot of game jams, but be average in normal gamedev job. And Notch might be one of those 10x game jam programmers, I do not know his work in this area.

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0 pointslatch9y ago0 comments

To me, what's impressive about Notch is the speed at which he can put a decent prototype together. What's also impressive is the experience he's collected.

If we're talking in the abstract, sure, maybe he isn't 1000x the programmer I am. I'm not really sure there's a huge value in looking at it that way though.

0 comments

mikulas_florek9y ago

squeaky-clean9y ago

> Minecraft is not that technologically great, it's just a fun game to play and very famous.

But that's the point. Kids aren't going out of their way to buy complex technical achievements. They want a fun game. They don't care if it's 30 mil lines of beautiful C or 200k lines of ugly Java.

> I do not think Notch have more programming experience than thousands of other programmers in the industry.

mikulas_florek9y ago

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