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Comment by dada78641 | Hacker News Reader

Reading that set of quotes, it really is incredible how little Musk knows about even extremely basic things. He doesn't understand there are different problem spaces in tech, and that different problem spaces require completely different approaches and skill sets. To him, something like World of Warcraft is very impressive, so if you build Paypal on the same technology it will be impressive too. Like, honestly it's shocking that this guy is allowed near anything that has a button.

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He sounds like Dilbert's boss...

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...

Yeah, I mean that archetype exists for a reason.

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-11-17>

The "games programmers are best programmers, in all senses" thing is a very, very common point of layperson confusion; not totally sure why.

(As someone who has worked in both the games industry and Big Tech(tm), yeah, no.)

Because a game looks hard. Forms look easy. Website? Even a phone can run a website, but a game requires that beefy big box!

Obviously there are many problems in the web world that are just as hard as problems in the game world. Some of them are even the same problems.

But having done both, making any game beyond the absolute most basic game in Unity is harder than what 95% of web developers do day to day.

I’m currently in web dev because it pays so much better, but game dev really is more technically challenging than most web dev.

It’s hard to compare average skill levels between the 2 because so many people are drawn to games because they love them and to the web because of the pay. But if I had to guess, I’d put my money on there being a significantly higher floor for game dev.

Sure, I also think game dev is more challenging than frontend webdev (and definitely more challenging than BUA MVC CRUD-fests on the backend), but IMHO any safety-critical[0] shit is simply where things start to get serious, though maybe it gets less challenging because most of it is paperwork, and if it works you are pretty sure it keeps working. All of this was also true of government, until quite recently.

[0] Which Musk maybe have heard of given he has a bit of experience lurking around automotive tech.

It is wrong to compare games and websites. What you should really compare is browser engines and game engines, and the former obviously requires much more effort and expertise to develop, so it is definitely not wrong to say that game developers (game engine developers) are better developers than web developers (browser engine developers).

I do think that game companies have a higher percentage of top-tier programmers. This is both due to pedigree and size of the field.

There are some incredible programmers in both big tech and game dev, but big tech has vastly more developers with less pressure to have top-tier talent.

Median developer at both probably represents the same skill because of normal distributions.

Game companies need developers that extract as much performance of the machine as possible.

Other companies need developers that make applications not anyone can push updates to. Those are also good developers.

There is no single metric for "good" in a field as vast as programming.

I agree, but the core reason for this has nothing to do with either of the points you mention. There are few other sub-cultures that come anywhere close to the (avg.) level of passion and narrow focus than game dev. And you absolutely need it, because it is very complex and usually badly paid.

I doubt it. Game companies need guys willing to sign their life away, months at a time. I worked in EDA, now storage. TONS of very talented people.

He's deeply autistic. It's a thing they tend to do.

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