I’m not sure that ‘failed’ is the right framing. I found game development really fun when I was a child and it was a great way of learning to program. The best way of learning to program is to write the kind of software that you care about. As a child, games counted for close to 100% of what I wanted to do with a computer, and easily 100% of what I wanted to do with a computer and couldn’t with existing off-the-shelf software, and so were the main thing to drive my interest in programming. As I grew older, I didn’t stop enjoying games, but I started doing a lot more things with computers. The set of things that I wanted to do with a computer but can’t do with existing software still has games in there somewhere, but as a tiny percentage and so I’m much happier playing off-the-shelf games and writing bespoke software in other domains.
I have never been interested in game dev, even as a kid, despite playing tons of video games. In elementary school a bunch of my friends were tinkering around with GameMaker, but I never was interested. I toyed around with it for less than an hour before getting bored.
Every programmer who is not a games dev is a failed games dev. :-)
I’m not sure that ‘failed’ is the right framing. I found game development really fun when I was a child and it was a great way of learning to program. The best way of learning to program is to write the kind of software that you care about. As a child, games counted for close to 100% of what I wanted to do with a computer, and easily 100% of what I wanted to do with a computer and couldn’t with existing off-the-shelf software, and so were the main thing to drive my interest in programming. As I grew older, I didn’t stop enjoying games, but I started doing a lot more things with computers. The set of things that I wanted to do with a computer but can’t do with existing software still has games in there somewhere, but as a tiny percentage and so I’m much happier playing off-the-shelf games and writing bespoke software in other domains.
I have never been interested in game dev, even as a kid, despite playing tons of video games. In elementary school a bunch of my friends were tinkering around with GameMaker, but I never was interested. I toyed around with it for less than an hour before getting bored.
I don’t know what this means. I’m neither a games dev nor a failed games dev. So… am I not a programmer?
Don’t take it personal, I think that OP just tried to make a joke based on his own experience that just fell flat.
That’s just nonsense.
TL;DR: yak shaving, but fun apparently.
it’s one of the best ways to learn!
I loved the article, so well written it takes no effort to read, very compelling.
I would love to know more about this, I’ve never wrote a compiler so I don’t really know what this means in the context of HTML.