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The same phenomenon occurs in online games like Starcraft. People in the lower leagues of Starcraft constantly go to message boards like the TeamLiquid forums and ask for advice on strategy, critiques of replays, etc. But in 99% of cases, basic fundamentals like always making workers, constantly producing out of existing production buildings before making new ones, and not becoming supply-blocked (a form of production bottleneck) are the real problem. But they have the same sort of denial you are referring to where they want to believe that if they just _knew_ something that they don't know, they could win.

It's actually kind of sad that these biases towards easy thoughts exist, because often the fundamentals are more accessible than the silver bullet is to any given practitioner. In other words, almost anyone can execute on fundamentals with practice, but the grand silver bullet strategies are often beyond the capabilities of a typical person.

I think thats a case of perceiving the basics to be to hard to properly execute on. Maxing out build orders in multiple buildings in multiple locations while optimally planning for expansion and getting the right balance of things being built is hard. I guess how this applies is that people want a short cut so they don't have to be the best they can be at the fundamentals.

I'm rather of the opinion they simply do not realize how important the fundamentals are. Fundamentals are not glamorous and easy to miss for the untrained eye, so when your enemy comes knocking with twice as many troops you are inclined to think they must be doing something special.

Starcraft actually makes the fundamentals deliberately difficult, note, which is one of the reasons it is so competitive but also one of the reasons it has such a steep learning curve. If you're a Zerg in SC2 you must program yourself every thirty seconds to go around to every hatch and inject larvae, every time, even in the middle of microing a battle. This is hard to do for most humans and even for professional gamers, and is one of the (many) things that drives me absolutely bats about SC2.

The thing that infuriates me about that particular example is it would take thirty seconds for someone at Blizzard to make that ability autocastable. But the analogous macro capabilities (Terran mules, Protoss chronoboost) are not so easily automated, and so everybody has to have this stupid timer in their heads. I like the Company of Heroes/Dawn of War 2 model better, where you can set something on "overwatch" which means the moment you have the resources, it will start building it. Not everything in DOW2 is overwatchable but a significant amount of the niggling details like troop reinforcement is, and it can really simplify things like "I want a Chimera ASAP". Even in DOW2 it isn't always appropriate--overwatch reinforcement can bleed resources you are banking to some higher tier unit dry--but it's nice to have the option.

I personally agree, but I suspect if Blizzard allowed enough of that sort of thing the nature of the game would become much more macro-focused, and what makes the game unique and great appears to be a balance between micro and macro.

well with the larvae example, you can have your queens in a group and then just spam-click the hatcheries on the minimap, or use a couple other techniques

but still i agree that it's going to be annoying because it has to keep ticking in your head regardless. in fact the annoying "economy" micro is the reason i got bored of the game and stopped playing. while i know i could get pretty darn good at the game if i practiced it with some seriousness, doing that was just more work than i would ever put into something that is supposed to be fun

The whole point is it's not about tightly optimized build orders or perfectly timed expansions.

    - Make workers always. Corollary: when you are about to have too many workers for one base, build another base.
    - Always be building out of production buildings. Corrolary: don't start new production buildings until you have too much money even maximally utilizing old buildings.
    - Don't get supply blocked.

(Caveat: none of this applies perfectly to Zerg because it is just harder. But the joy of Starcraft is that there are two other races that weren't designed deliberately to be obtuse and difficult to play.)

If you can consistently do those three things you will be able to attack-move into the enemy's base right up to the 95th percentile of Starcraft players. It has nothing to do with maxing out build orders or any of that complicated stuff. It's the barest, simplest fundamentals that most people have a very poor grasp of that are both the easiest and most necessary ways to improve their game.

It's like someone who is not very good at basketball. If you wanted to tell them how to get better would you say, "You should learn the full court press, zone defense, give and go." Or would you say, "Learn how to shoot a basket. Learn how to make a pass." I would argue the latter is going to contribute more to being a good basketball player.

It's funny because in this example, there are silver bullets that show up every once in a while. Extremely overpowered and specific things you do in a very specific order (a build) which wins an overwhelming majority of the time. There are a few shortcuts, but they don't make you better in the long run, they allow you to exploit information asymmetry, temporarily.

In a DEC Press book covering the history of minicomputers (Gordon Bell was one of the authors as I recall), the most interesting observation was that the companies that survived let alone thrived in the frothy period for them were the ones that did an acceptable job of every essential thing.

E.g. make great hardware but don't document it well enough, you fail. DEC's forte at the time was CPUs, most of the rest wasn't so hot, but it was all good enough.

The end of DEC was the end of an era.

Alpha was (and possibly still is) one of the most elegant cpu architectures ever designed.

It just arrived too late to save DEC and that's a real pity.

DEC pretty much pioneered interactive computing and for that alone we all owe them a great deal.

It's weird how the DEC legacy got passed from company to company, now HP owns it, like an old cupboard passed on through inheritance.

Engineers went to both Intel and AMD.

Being able to engineer CPUs at that lefl is probably not the kind of skill that will see you without a job from time to time, those must be very desirable people.

The DEC Alpha legacy actually wound up at AMD, in the form of the early generation Athlon processors. HP abandoned the Alpha but AMD snapped up the core ideas and a lot of the talent.

So, you got me curious. It turns out that the IP ended up with Intel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha , I can't seem to find out who owns the brand, but the DEC brand definitely ended up with HP.

I don't think he's talking about the legaleese but the 'spirit'.

Apparently a chunk of engineering went to Intel, another to AMD.

Do you have any idea about the title of the book?

I'm almost positive that it's somewhere in this (scanned) book: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/CGB%20Fi...

From a page off of Bell's home page: Bell, C. G., C. Mudge, J. McNamara, COMPUTER ENGINEERING, Digital Press 1978

I think the search for silver bullets is a great instinct. People always look for the solution that gives them most bang for their buck.

There are a couple of problem, though.

Silver bullets are often mutually exclusive. No-one wants to be the AirBnB for gay vegan business travellers in Ohio - there's nothing wrong with being a niche player but you still need a reasonable market.

Silver bullets can also be an sign laziness, as you say.

Ultimately, you have to see what the rest of the market is doing. Some people do well with low costs, a small team, and a cheap (but usable) alternative. Others do well with an interesting twist, and a good execution. Then there's the big companies, with boring but well polished products.

Ultimately, no-one here should be misled enough to get into a business without having an edge. Once you have the edge though, it's a matter of getting everything else right.

Normally I would never post a youtube link, but this sketch from the UK comedy show Mitchell and Webb sums up my opinion on this perfectly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1NfWIaYed8

Cooking good food well, using simple ingredients, isn't something that anyone can do well.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that one before! "King Lear is just English words put in order!"