Day-To-Day Work Logs and Woot! Engine Stuff!

I don't really know what you are trying to say to be honest

 

Basically, when developing a game, you can't just go and fix "all" of the bugs (to start with it's impossible) and/or you can't just implement "all" of the features. And just because a patch brings, say, gamepad support it doesn't mean that the bugs are being ignored.

 

That's pretty much what I was after David, and I think it'd do you and the GLG guys a service if you wrote that up into a (potentially longer) post for either the Early Access forums or for the blog. It may cut down on some level the amount of whining you will get about bugs being present for multiple builds and why features may not arrive as or when they were scheduled to.

Like for example, if your game has a showstopping bug that hits, say, three hours into the game then that needs to be addressed, but the team members addressing it might struggle to find the cause for a few weeks, and in that time someone else might have finished something unrelated, so you push that in the next build with this bug still present because you can't yet address it - but that would result in people screaming bloody murder about how this bug hasn't been squished. It's exaggeration on some level, of course, but anyone who has spent time in Early Access forums will know just how common a situation it can be.

 

And I just want to add that I really agree with that. There are people who will never get it and will still complain (those people are stupid), but many of the complainers simply don't know how it looks from your side, so writing a bit about that might be helpful there.

 

With a couple of jokes.

 

TLDR: Blame canada for the delay
(NSFW)

 

How yayful, a post about how much suffering a dev's life is. Well, it was still entertaining to read, and I, too, hope that it will help with people prone to complaining about schedules and bugs and other things.

 

I should show it to my father. He always thought that since I like to play games, I would naturally also like to be a developer. To me it is akin to liking to watch football versus liking to have 400 pound armored men pummel me into the dirt.

 

Those 400lbs armored men can now run a 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds reliably is whats the scary part.

 

True, that comparison. Though honestly, I don't watch sports because instead of watching and doing nothing I'd rather get out and pummel each other into the ground ... or whatever else, volleyball is nice.

But since you mentioned it, I have to say that, at least when and where I begun my journey as an IT student (a long time ago, folks), pretty much half of the beginning students were people who liked to play games and decided that this means studying IT will be fun ... yeah, right, most of them couldn't get through the first semester, none through the second. Of course, calculus, statistics, and electronics played significant part in it as those courses were splendid unsuited-people–killers.

 

First time I've ever seen being a developer compared to being crushed nearly to death by 400 pound football players. Speaking as a former Programmer and Systems Analyst, it's really nothing like that lol. If you enjoy it, it's more akin to spending time doing something you like. And if you don't like it, it's akin to being bored for a few hours a day. Regardless, there's very little risk of a broken knee or serious head trauma. Now if you were allowed to tackle or beat up your idiot boss to prevent an unfair deadline... things might go very differently

In any case, I was a Yankees fan back when I lived in the Bronx we're talking at 3 to 5 years old), and watched a Mohammed Ali back when I was in grade school because it was the big thing then. As I got older, I enjoyed watching baseball in the same years I played Little League, and pretty much stopped watching when I stopped playing Little League, because it started to bore me. I watched Bobby Fischer play chess because I also played chess at the time -- had I not played chess, I'd probably not have been interested. When I started playing Tennis, I started watching tennis on TV, and again stopped after I stopped playing (again, it started to bore me, and I can't explain why). When I fenced, the only Olympic sport I ever was interested in watching was Fencing (it's not like there's a big Fencing season here, and matches of the week and so on, anyway). The interest in it kind of wained after I left college and stopped fencing (I did still play some tennis at that time -- this is all out of order). Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that I've only ever been interested in watching sports that I've actually wanted to participate in. Anything else has bored me. I used to go to Superbowl parties and play poker in the next room.

 

Clearly our work environments have very different dynamics.

Semi-on-topic, this piece from a couple of years ago has done the rounds through our dev team this week: http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

 

I have worked at a place similar to that. But I've also worked at my dream job (then again, I had a couple of decades experience at that point, the trust of my employers and co-workers, and it was in the midwest, which is WAY more laid back in both rl and at work than in the northeast, which tended to be more deadline-driven. It was a place where programming staff was actually treated fairly and as good or better than their non-IT staff (which I know, is unusual -- many places IT people are treated as little more than replacable cogs in the machine, and overworked until they break). At that time, I also had programmers working for me, and I promise you I treated them better than I myself had been treated in the past because I knew how it felt to be treated badly, to have unfair deadlines, to have bosses who would make you work 72 hours straight over the weekend while they went home in chauffered limousines (or in one case, a helicopter -- I kid you not).

So let me assure you that there are places that treat IT staff well. Maybe I was just incredibly lucky and found the one place in the U.S. where IT people had it pretty good.

BTW, there was a time (and I understand that this thing raises its head periodically, only to get chopped off) when there was a movement to unionize IT personel. For some stupid reason, it always dies out.

 

Well, treating IT teams well is one thing ... but I concur with the article Wolg posted in that programming for prolonged periods of time is like keeping a pet illithid. It's not something human brains were meant to handle for prolonged periods of time, regardless of whether we enjoy it or not (and if we do, we are probably beyond saving already).

This is why I like working out a bit, come to think of it. Nothing better than just shutting the brain down from all this insanity once in a while.

 

What used to kill me in IT was the insane deadlines, which would lead to 80 hour weeks, of unpaid overtime, sleep deprivation, and stress coming from irate bosses and clients. Trust me, if you have more rational deadlines, combined with a more relaxed atmosphere, that alone makes a huge difference. Things like flextime, and being able to work from home as necessary (which is a great help especially if you are a parent with sick kid, for example, or are under the weather yourself and don't want to infect the whole office) greater vacation time, bosses who show genuine appreciation when you do a good job (unlike the robotic lip service I'd get other places, completely contradicted by that bosses subsequent actions), and several other things, all serve to make life less stressful. If you are consistantly working more than 40 to 50 hours a week, being sleep-deprived because of stress, you are going to eventually break in one way or another.

BTW, although I never took advantage of it, I've known people at that good IT job that I was talking about, who literally called in asking for a mental health day, and they were given it, no questions asked (granted, it was counted as a sick day, but that's only fair). So yes, I agree that overwork is bad, doing anything mentally taxing for too long without a break is definitely bad. But it REALLY shouldn't be that way. That way lies madness (and mistakes, which only make matters worse).

 

I used to work outside as an archaeologist. Now I do IT as a config manager... I think I cannot see the world as you folks do, it makes my poor brain hurt. I want bones and mud, not time entry and perl... Still, I admire those that can swing such mastery of numbers and code.

 

My job straight out of college, before I was a programmer was working in a fish lab for an environmental consulting firm. They wanted to promote me to work in the field, which entailed going out on a boat up and down the Hudson river, in the middle of winter, collecting samples. All of the samples for a section of the river had to be collected within a 24 hour time period on the weekend, which meant being on the boat for longer than that (and awake for about that length of time), and then I'd have to be in the lab monday morning at 8 am. Thank god I found a job in programming before that happened. It was a terrible job in programming, but imho it still was better than spending my weekends on a boat in upstate New York in the middle of winter, without any sleep.

 

At least it's better to hear that than "stop doing stupid things on your computer" as i always heard in my youth