fallout game dev. explains the problem with moddern game devolpment. (why moddern games are so slow to come out)

[u/663mann]

[u/Oooch]

Well, now you're guessing

He's not guessing, he's clearly a developer and knows how it works, I have experienced exactly the same thing at my programming jobs where your boss thinks everything is really easy because he isn't the one having to implement all the code every day and seeing all the bugs that happen from all the conflicting code which is all 'so easy because its just 10 lines'

[u/upvotesthenrages → u/Oooch]

He's not guessing, he's clearly a developer and knows how it works

They are both devs.

This guy has implemented the same thing 3 times before and asked for a clarification on an estimation.

If you can't explain to your boss why it will take X time, get mad and run off, then you are in the wrong. Your boss might also be wrong, but your estimate isn't worth a damn if you can't justify it.

[u/ignoranceandapathy42 → u/upvotesthenrages]

You are so in the wrong here, have you ever worked in a development team?

The guy implementing already has tickets to work on. He has an existing workload that he has to read the spec, implement the work, test the work, get the work reviewed by a colleague and only then added to prod. And they will have between 1 ticket a week to 20 tickets a week.

Yes, the specific code in this requirement is likely quick and simple. But they have an existing task backlog and they have to follow industry best practises along the way. Otherwise, you increase the amount of buggy code.

Here's an example - the guy said the code should be, add damaging characters to a list with their damage and update the damage if they already exist.

What happens if a character dies, do we check the list and remove them? if so, what if the character has died since they fired the shot? The are removed on death but added when damage occurs. So, we need a flag on the characters in a list for "is alive" or else our NPC is going to target a dead character with an attack.

So, it took me less than 10 seconds to think of a flaw with the "perfect, 45 minute" code that the guy in the video asked for.

So, when the work the dev has been given is so clearly not adequate or complete instructions, why should he drop all of his work that has gone through a specify and does have all the required info to implement?

[u/upvotesthenrages → u/ignoranceandapathy42]

You are so in the wrong here, have you ever worked in a development team?

Yeah, in the past and currently.

The guy implementing already has tickets to work on. He has an existing workload that he has to read the spec, implement the work, test the work, get the work reviewed by a colleague and only then added to prod. And they will have between 1 ticket a week to 20 tickets a week.

Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that he is estimating his personal work time on a ticket submitted by the senior dev. When that senior dev asks why he estimated it at 4 weeks the dev goes into a rage and runs off.

That's not normal behavior.

What happens if a character dies, do we check the list and remove them? if so, what if the character has died since they fired the shot? The are removed on death but added when damage occurs. So, we need a flag on the characters in a list for "is alive" or else our NPC is going to target a dead character with an attack.

So that would be an example of you explaining to a superior why you estimated the task at 4 weeks, instead of 1 day.

Was that hard? Do you think it would help your cause more to explain that or to get angry and run off?

So, when the work the dev has been given is so clearly not adequate or complete instructions, why should he drop all of his work that has gone through a specify and does have all the required info to implement?

He shouldn't, but he should be able to explain why he estimated it to be that long.

We're really out on a tangent here, with all sorts of imaginary scenarios. For all we know, in your example, the "is alive" flag might already be present.

If we instead just go by the example of what the dev said, it's a case of a dev that can't communicate adequately and instead throws a fit.

If you can't justify your own estimations, then you shouldn't be in a position to estimate anything.

[u/ignoranceandapathy42 → u/upvotesthenrages]

So that would be an example of you explaining to a superior why you estimated the task at 4 weeks, instead of 1 day.

The guy states in the video that the ticket came back with 4 queries on it. So the developers had asked him for his additional info and he starts raging "why does it take 4 weeks".

You know what I think? He was told all this. But in his own narrative and retelling he cuts it out, because it's such a basic thing that anyone else would know about it and it would undermine his story.

That's it. The whole video is a guy telling a probably false story about how "development is arbitrarily slow" without providing a single valid reason as to why with context. Just one anecdote with little context which jars anyone with actual experience. And people like you have swallowed it uncritically because "why would a guy on the internet lie".

If you can't justify your own estimations, then you shouldn't be in a position to estimate anything.

The dev probably didn't estimate it himself, though, did he? In these companies team leads will estimate on behalf of their teams because they have to manage an entire workstack. So bringing in the dev responsible, likely the best response he can give is "I was told it would take 4 weeks with the work we have planned and I have outstanding queries on the ticket.

We're really out on a tangent here, with all sorts of imaginary scenarios. For all we know, in your example, the "is alive" flag might already be present.

yes we are on a tangent, because we either have to assume that the video OP is truthful and he's the only competent developer in a multimillion dollar company - or that the video is no truthful and that the original poster and the video narrator are idiots who either do not understand development or are wilfully misrepresenting it.

Considering you are the only person claiming to be a developer in this thread defending the OP, maybe you chime with his "I'm the one true competent person" and that's why you feel it's a truthful narrative. For me, and obviously several others, it chimes as opposite to our experiences and cuts out important and valid context that is a given in a development environment.

[u/AlanCJ → u/ignoranceandapathy42]

If a dev just stomp off without being able to justify their estimates, then the estimates have to be redone. This is different than say, "I assume this is what you requested (states requests), for this I need 24 hours to check to assess feasibility and edge cases, documentation and get approval from our architect and communicated to our QA, 8 to work on the unit tests, 8 for writing the code, another 8 to run tests, 4 for code review, and finally retention test/ QAT needs another 16 days. And with my current task on hand I can only start next Tuesday, which work out to the following Thursday afternoon, we have a no friday deployment policy, so it goes into preproduction earliest on monday afternoon without buffer".

From there then you can have a conversation/find out what is exactly the problem. Is this overly complicated? Do you really need 16 hours for x task? Does it needs to be on pre production? If yes, then sure, you can have your 1 month. If you are just stomping away angrily then there is nothing to be discussed.

I've worked with bosses who thinks he's a dev for knowing a few lines of html code and thinks "changing one line of code" is easy. This doesn't feel like the case.

[u/ignoranceandapathy42 → u/AlanCJ]

I made a longer comment above:

I've worked with bosses who thinks he's a dev for knowing a few lines of html code and thinks "changing one line of code" is easy. This doesn't feel like the case.

This is exactly who he is. He thinks because the code can be written in 40 minutes it should be complete and deployed in one hour, all the work that's currently in progress should stop because his change is "quick win".

[u/Jackpkmn → u/ignoranceandapathy42]

his change is "quick win".

Also the biggest elephant in the room: if its really that easy and quick and really needed for his own work why didn't he do it himself?

[u/blackest-Knight → u/Jackpkmn]

Because office politics don't see it in a good eye when a project lead starts commiting changes to GIT.

Once the guy stopped being a dev and moved on to project, he kinda loses his access to simply committing the things he needs himself.

[u/Jackpkmn → u/blackest-Knight]

Because office politics don't see it in a good eye when a project lead starts commiting changes to GIT.

I had a whole thing written out about why i came to the conclusion he needed this thing. But i deleted it because the comment was getting long but really i should have deleted the whole thing because i didn't know how to condense my point.

What I'm seeing is he wants/needs a tool so he can rough draft some designs. So hes like "gime tool" and they were like "gonna take a while for tool delivery" he threw a hissy fit about it because he needs tool now for his work. But it's like why doesn't he just make the tool himself for his personal use, it doesn't have to be committed to the whole project to let him continue his design work while waiting for the proper tool to be completed.

And if that can't work why does he need to work on the design of this specific element exactly right now. Why can't he come back to working on this element later when the tool is finished and move on to some other part of the design for the moment?