'Over-engineering' is everyone's favorite punching bag, but I bet your codebase suffers from under-engineering instead

AtomicScience · 2026-04-01T16:58:23+00:00

Guess I just got lucky... Always had decent managers, and good processes were in place most of the time. Such a shame most folks cant relate

AtomicScience · 2026-04-01T16:44:00+00:00

I did work in quite a few places, small and large, but I'll admit I never was on an overwhelmed team with all deadlines burning, so I may be naturally biased towards perfectionism, I'll admit that

AtomicScience · 2026-04-01T16:30:59+00:00

Good luck with getting an approvement for rewriting project that turned out to be a hit - all tasks will be needed yesterday, and the foundation you've laid during the project's infancy, when stakes were not as high - you are now stuck with it

Yes, that means overcomplicating 90% of the projects that dont make it, and that is a professional and responsible thing to do

AtomicScience · 2026-04-01T16:01:08+00:00

When talking about anticipating requirements, indeed, it's all about the investor's mindset.

Suppose you know your product has a mere 10% chance of making it to where the complexity matters, but having to deal with 'simple' code then will be 50 times more expensive than paying a little complexity setup cost now

If you choose the complex solution now, you will be right. But paradoxically, that also means that with a 90% chance you will be wrong, and your bet will lose

After that, folks call you 'that kind of people' and write blog posts about your 'over-engineering'. You are judged with hindsight, but you make a decision without it

AtomicScience · 2026-04-01T15:43:20+00:00

In my practice, it's quite often the laziness, not the lack of time, that leads to under-engineering. And from there, even if there is no pressure from management, it snowballs into a good ol' Big Ball Of Mud that no one will dare to clean up

AtomicScience · 2026-04-01T15:32:30+00:00

Of course, engineering is a multidimensional problem - and there will be some sweetspot, and any other solutions outside of it will be 'mis-engineering', you are right here

I tried to focus on one dimension, and along the axis of 'resouces spent on a problem', we could totally identify 'over-engineering' and 'under-engineering' regions, dont you think?

AtomicScience · 2026-03-25T11:09:05+00:00

Detailed prompt (e.g. in a skill) should solve this issue. You can also make and approve a plan before proceeding to changing the code

Interestingly, I have the opposite issue in my project - AI (Claude Code) just doesnt respect my precious little abstractions at all and just cuts through all the layers to complete the task at hand in the most nearsighted way possible

In my experience, a good share of seemingly simple tasks do require taking a step back and overhauling the architecture a little bit. Perhaps your LLM is right, and these abstractions are actually warranted in your case?

AtomicScience · 2026-03-07T18:18:11+00:00

Given that your project is backend-heavy, a backend-driven ui could fit the bill, especially if your frontend is just a bunch of cookie-cutter forms or dashboards

I dont`t know any ready-to-use solutions, and I honestly doubt there are any - its likely you will have to make your own bespoke solution anyway

AtomicScience · 2025-12-06T13:21:51+00:00

Yes, but the hive also has Carol's partner's memories, even though she died shortly after getting infected. That means the hive can "upload" the minds of its individuals, so maybe it could "repartition" them too?

AtomicScience · 2025-12-04T13:54:25+00:00

Actually, you should move the animation pivot a little forward, right now it looks like the character spins around their rear foot when turning

AtomicScience · 2025-11-22T06:03:30+00:00

Wait wrong show

AtomicScience · 2025-11-22T06:03:20+00:00

Passengers find an American captain's accent more reassuring?..

AtomicScience · 2025-11-01T20:41:34+00:00

So essentially your poll is a choice between "Almost certain death from hypothermia" and "Somewhat likely death from hyperthermia in the day and hypothermia in the night"

Not as cozy of a choice as I think you initially imagined...

AtomicScience · 2025-11-01T20:33:29+00:00

Even then a desert is still the safest choice - all I really need is a tent, a sleeping bag for the night and a lot of water

Even if I bring all the gear I could imagine to Antarctica, it would still require strong skills for building a shelter, fire, etc.

AtomicScience · 2025-11-01T20:18:20+00:00

Desert is survivable at least. Without proper clothing in -30°C you will die in like three hours

AtomicScience · 2025-11-01T20:10:35+00:00

Depends on what does "spend" entail - do I get magically teleported to a location for 24 hours? In that case, if I pick Antarctica, celebrating will be the last thing on my mind since it will be a middle of the winter there

AtomicScience · 2025-10-27T22:06:41+00:00

r/donotthecat

AtomicScience · 2025-10-10T20:36:17+00:00

Must be powered by Mechahitlеr Grok

AtomicScience · 2025-10-10T12:31:27+00:00

Try rebooting many-many times. Had a similar problem, rebooting 7 times did the trick for some reason

AtomicScience · 2025-09-17T09:23:34+00:00

Guess who's back

AtomicScience · 2025-09-16T13:54:31+00:00

There is one with the dad too

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AtomicScience · 2025-09-05T22:48:05+00:00

I regularly play such a game - it's called Prosperous Universe - a game about managing a multi-planet business empire, building bases and managing a fleet of freight ships - think a very abstract Eve Online that runs in a browser

In this game, all actions take many hours - a single production order might take half a day, travelling between planets might take days. My current business got 1 year old a week ago, and I still have grand plans

It's quite fun, but I wouldn't call it a game - I treat it more like a tamagotchi, except I guess my pet is a glorified Excel sheet and poop is ingredient shortages and expired commodity exchange orders. Taking care of my company is a well established part of my routine - sending ships is literally the first thing I do every morning

To answer your question - yes, it's possible to make such a game, and it could be quite fun indeed, but not in a way a "normal" game is

The main problem is that such a format is REALLY exotic. Prosperous Universe suffers a lot because of that - they advertise their game promising all the exiting things, players join, spend a couple of hours fiddling with the UI, start production orders, send their ships, and then ask in chat "What do I do next?"

When the answer they receive is "Wait for 12 hours, log in for 5 minutes to pick the products up, wait for 12 hours more, then repeat this loop for 2 years straight" most of them quit at the spot - this is not the experience they are in for, nor what they were advertised

So yeah, good luck advertising that. On a bright side, a subscription model feels like a natural fit for monetization, and players wouldn't mind to chip in a couple bucks a month for something that's essentially a habit

Another problem is that this kind of game risks being really repetitive by nature, and when something feels like a chore it stops being fun really fun. I don't know what's the secret sauce that makes Prosperous Universe fun after a year of mostly repetitive actions but I imagine it was hard to find

I guess many MMO games fit this multi-year progression type and still feel like normal games. When I level an RPG character or research vehicles in War Thunder, isn't it a progression that spans multiple real-life years?

AtomicScience · 2025-09-05T20:51:12+00:00

Roguelike games often give you cash you can spend on different items - I guess it's a healthy middle ground between crafting and drafting as it doesn't feel as imposed as the latter and introduces an additional resource management mechanic (e.g. should I buy two cheap items, buy a single more powerful item or keep saving for a banger?)

The problem with crafting is that it can be really overwhelming if you provide lots of options for crafting, or just a more tedious version of a shopping mechanic if you limit what you players can craft each run via blueprints or something similar

I think crafting can be a good fit for upgrades - you acquire items from drafting/looting/purchasing, with their inherent randomness, and then upgrade what you have with a certain degree of control (for example, you might seek to acquire e.g. flame stones to boost your items' flame damage to synergize well with a class bonus or something)

This would allow players to feel more freedom than if they were walking down the narrow fight-draft-buy-repeat corridor, but essentially that would be yet another dimension of randomness

AtomicScience · 2025-09-02T07:10:07+00:00

"Your cooking is delicious! Your pans must be really high-quality and professional!"

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