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Comment by runevault | Hacker News Reader

Feels like we as a society just want to skip to the end. Fundamentals are how we got here and we still need them to keep growing.

An example related to a lot of the debate I'm seeing in these comments: Anytime anyone talks about wanting to build a their own engine to build a game, the majority of replies boil down to basically "you're an idiot just use an existing engine." There is nothing wrong with using one that already exists, but we need to stop discouraging people from/pushing people away from understanding the core of ideas, and start making it easy to find that path and explore it.

We need future generations who are equipped to start from first principles and explore in directions prior generations never thought to if we are to continue to advance.

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Granted I’m a cynic by nature but I think that’s just the design.

We have an elite class that is the first principles thinking in group. They imagine and build the future. They enable the next group to build the consumer level tools to enable this upper middle class (the startup founders who build yet another clone of a clone aka nothing novel, engineering VPs etc.) of people to employ the rest (Uber drivers, warehouse workers) who need to stay low to do the work.

A massive drone class who does what they’re told to keep the hive going.

This is an incredibly dark thought, but I don't know that I can discard it out of hand and that makes me sort of sad.

Growing up without running water and electricity and then growing up in the US has been a mind boggling journey. In and out groups are all I’ve known my whole life. :/

Andrei Sorin's book (it's available free online) might be interesting to you. It's quite long but if you skip around in chapter 7 (on software) you might find some ideas worth keeping around.

This is sadly everywhere now, e.g. "data scientists" are just people trying to do a statisticians job without any formal background on probability theory.

That's exactly how I feel about this fake term. The job description should be something like "data analyst". Very little people doing that reach the level of scientist. You need to publish useful research and get feedback on it to call yourself a scientist.

I have a friend who got a real degree in data science and we talk sometimes about the people on reddit who ask the questions that boil down to EXACTLY what you are talking about. I just don't track that space as closely so mostly hear about it second hand.

Well, it really depends. Do you want to build a game or do you want to learn about building games. For the former, you’re better off using an existing a game engine. For the latter, building a game engine would help tremendously. If you simply wanted to build a game, and that’s the main goal you’re wasting your time reinventing some thing that has already been done repeatedly, it’s reliable and it’s readily available and it already does what you need.

I covered this in my comment. I didn't say using engines is bad, I said discouraging people from wanting to build them out of hand is.

Most people asking how to “build a their own engine to build a game” should be discouraged from that. They’re probably either not thinking deeply about the trade-offs or are not in a position experience-wise to do so. Just because 0.5% should be encouraged doesn’t make the common response that you see wrong as a default.

(Someone who shipped a game on a custom engine 25 years ago; would not do the same now.)

> Most people asking how to “build a their own engine to build a game” should be discouraged from that.

Why? You didn't even ask why they want to build their own engine. If the purpose is to learn their underpinnings, then they should not be discouraged to do so. This telling people they should be discouraged to build engines is just stupid and unfortunately very common based on gross generalizations of what "most" people "want". Why not ask what the person's motivations are instead of assuming they are a brain-dead code-camp weekend motherfucker who all they want is to make an "app"?

It’s right in their sentence. They’re saying they want to end up with a game.

If someone came to you asking “how can I write a word processor so I can write a letter?” what would you advise them?

“I want to build a new game engine to learn how to do it.” “Right this way; here’s how I’d approach starting that long journey.”

“I want to build a new game engine so I can write a game.” “You should probably skip the engine step and go straight to making the game.”

Give me a few million dollars to live off of first, and then I can pursue many deep-dives in and of themselves. Until then, I will maximize ROI by combining things to deliver value fastest and furthest. Money gives freedom.

-- This is (rightfully so) the mindset of non-academics who don't want to squander time / opportunity.

There's an "intellectual immune response" effect, when a group that asserts that you don't need to know something meets someone demonstrating the passion to learn it.

Yup we need those people. But how many others WOULD have done the thing if they weren't brow beaten into "you are an idiot if you do this"?

It's a way of solving a (tribe-wide) coordination problem, because if enough people do the thing, the balance shifts and it's not acceptable to ridicule anymore. The opposite of being curious about something and wanting to study it, is wanting not to know it (for example, how I feel about kubernetes). This can easily turn into not wanting others around you to know it.

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