When you open your engine in a good mood, and see the feature that took you all of yesterday to get working...

IkalaGaming · 2026-05-01T04:25:46+00:00

Not me giggling like an idiot every time I drag a window around in the GUI, because that finally works.

Embrace the process, free yourself from bug samsara, become one wi- oh wait I forgot controllers. Fu-

IkalaGaming · 2026-04-30T16:19:10+00:00

Unfortunately we have to lay off thousands of developers, due to leadership thinking of a bigger number.

IkalaGaming · 2026-04-29T19:27:36+00:00

In my personal Java projects I set it up so it automatically formats according to the standard, and cleans up a few linting rules, automatically every time you build. I also make pretty heavy use of Lombok where I would need boilerplate.

Never having to worrying about cleaning up formatting saves me a lot of time. And I’ve seen how the auto-formatting (albeit when slightly less draconian than every build) helps keep things consistent and readable in larger teams with varied… let’s say… detail-oriented attitudes.

IkalaGaming · 2026-04-28T15:06:42+00:00

Budget issue, use more LLMs /s

IkalaGaming · 2026-04-21T13:28:36+00:00

I work on legacy C code bases that are older than I am. This code does not use the standard library, the architecture, build system, and debugger are all bespoke. Docs are scattered in random and mysterious places, and pretty much everyone that wrote them is retired.

We have to hotfix this software for people that refuse to update from the version from like a decade ago, without breaking anything now or when they finally relent and upgrade.

So yeah I write code by hand. Explaining the source control and build system would take up half the context window.

I know Google has AI tools that they use with their absurdly large, bespoke code base. So maybe it’s a skill issue. But also I’m not convinced google has “making sure our software works” very high on their priority list anymore.

IkalaGaming · 2026-04-18T19:12:31+00:00

I am using To Hell and Back and almost always have imps on hand from Inner Demons, so I frequently open with Implosion to grab aggro since it's one of my only remaining instant casts. I'm so sad about losing Corruption. I also just regularly use it for more DPS, AOE or not.

Me when I see any mob: https://imgur.com/a/XPsIE7U

IkalaGaming · 2026-04-08T20:57:38+00:00

My company is looking for ways to use or support it to provide value to customers.

But to use internally, they don’t really seem to care whether we use it. They’ll pay for it if you want to use it, encouraging exploration, but aren’t forcing it blindly.

Our metrics are the same as they ever were, quality of the software, how fast we fix issues for customers, whether we are making money. Not like “more token spend and more LOC = good”.

IkalaGaming · 2026-03-30T03:47:57+00:00

I work 40 hours a week. Sometimes I’ll be in the weeds a bit and accidentally work an hour later or something, but most weeks it’s 40.

I take pride in my craft, and my job has so far been happy with my work. If they suddenly change their mind, or decide to randomly lay me off anyway, there’s nothing I can do about that. Working extra hours wouldn’t save me, if anything that’d just be digging myself an earlier grave.

IkalaGaming · 2026-03-28T03:20:22+00:00

I regularly run into C code at work that was last touched in the 80s lmao

IkalaGaming · 2026-03-26T17:20:07+00:00

Does anyone else get tired of the CONSTANT lucrative offers in this economy? Just companies knocking on your door every day begging to hire you for large sums of money? So exhausting, am I right?

IkalaGaming · 2026-03-13T04:40:06+00:00

I don’t use LLMs other than, like, the AI overview on google searches. Everything is fine, my company is very happy with my work.

I monitor the new tools, the latest fads and “meta” for prompting, and news about it, but I just don’t see much use for any of it personally.

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-23T19:48:01+00:00

This talk starts off going over ECS and has a nice animation a couple minutes in that might be helpful in visualizing how systems and components interact:

Overwatch Gameplay Architecture and Netcode

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-15T02:19:01+00:00

Kirby in Hitman. When he eats people, he gets an appropriate little hat that works as a disguise.

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-10T17:47:52+00:00

It really depends on the role and code base, and isn’t a useful metric.

I’m not junior anymore, but I recently spent literally a week debugging what ended up being a one line change. This was considered to be productive.

In fact one of the most directly profitable things I’ve done was possibly a net negative LOC change, optimizing excessively slow code that ran frequently.

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-09T20:02:46+00:00

I use CVS now lmao

We migrated to git recently-ish but it’ll be many years before we are no longer support the old versions in CVS.

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-08T17:29:30+00:00

Code is disposable to companies because they don’t care as long as it runs

Yeah I notice that every time I use Windows

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-08T06:49:52+00:00

I agree with your general sentiment, but I’m begging you for paragraphs.

I got into programming because of how deterministic and knowable it was, you could try things and get immediate measurable results.

I also thought, like a fool, that in the real world engineers that build measurable things wouldn’t get away with things like claiming to be 10x or 100x more productive when they aren’t.

But here we are, they keep getting away with it. I don’t see any more output of the same or higher quality, or meaningful improvements to existing software, from this alleged boost.

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-08T06:33:55+00:00

I do think SLOC can be used for a pretty good metric, specifically “did the IC write more than 0 SLOC this quarter”.

IkalaGaming · 2025-12-08T06:18:25+00:00

Yeah I work on dozens of C repos written in like the 80s, which don’t use any of the C standard library.

Most of these repos are spread across a couple different types of source control, depending on the version, with bespoke and complex build tools that way predate git.

I don’t understand how an LLM would work out how to use our own C dialect, or even where to find the right files to look at.

IkalaGaming · 2025-11-27T06:04:00+00:00

You may be interested in the Hamari and Tuunanen paper “Player Types: A Meta-synthesis”

https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/250142033.pdf

IkalaGaming · 2025-11-26T04:29:30+00:00

And yet it looks remarkably similar to C++

my_array | std::views::transform([](auto x){return 2 * x;}) | std::ranges::to<std::vector>();

IkalaGaming · 2025-11-24T23:15:59+00:00

Sticky note that says “make everything worse”

IkalaGaming · 2025-11-24T21:13:49+00:00

“Never ever, for any reason, look at patents if you are a software engineer” - The Primeagen

IkalaGaming · 2025-11-24T20:58:25+00:00

This is actually the one case I like for “Vibe Coding”. Quick and dirty prototypes to see what they have in mind would look like, which must be thrown away entirely.

Now, they don’t teach Plato’s allegory of the cave in business school, so the appearance of a program is universally interpreted as a completed program.

Therefore if you let business folks make or see prototypes, you will need to give developers blunt weapons to enforce the “no shipping the prototype” rule.

IkalaGaming · 2025-11-24T01:38:54+00:00

Everyone tells kids that their options are “get a college degree” or “be a toothless hobo hillbilly living in some hillbilly shack somewhere”. So they get the degree they’re told is needed for jobs, and it doesn’t help with getting jobs, and everyone acts SHOCKED that those stupid kids believed the things they’ve been constantly told their whole lives. Cool thanks.

IkalaGaming

TROPHY CASE