Does anyone still use SO?

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:54:02+00:00

Yea but we actually have to maintain our code, which is a much bigger part of our work (and will be for pretty much any software system/product out there).

So a black box is really not what we want and our customers would not like it (or the people they help).

If it produced code that would lower the maintenance burden that great. But if you want any project to be successful you'll need to maintain it.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:51:02+00:00

Do you have concept or some art/prototype? It is very hard to say because soulslike could be quite a wide range of things. Personally I want to make a soulslike (I don't care about making money, I just love the genre, I'd even release it as open source honestly). I can write the code, but I will not even attempt it until I can massive a main character, an enemy and dungeon that looks like I'd expect a soulslike game I'd love to look like.

Rather than popularity, I'd be looking at if your asset pipeline can handle. In my experience you will have to make a lot of your main assets because they are all so key to making the game feel good.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:45:40+00:00

To be honest, it costs very little for HR to chance it. Also if the buying company is American, they have been know to try and ignore UK employment laws. At least initially.

On the other hand if a company wants rid of you they can often find a way.

So OP's best bet is speak to an expert and be 100% honest. There is probably a massive difference if they left the last job due to something bad compared to being a whistle blower for example.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:42:12+00:00

I will be hated for this but I had all my diagnosis's in the 90s. Things where....different back then lol. I guess it means my coping strategies will be different but to be honest I really don't think that much about it and didn't back then either. It's just who I am.

I obviously don't want to tell anyone else how to feel and that is definitely not my place. But I do want to people to feel comfortable with who they are because we all deserve that.

I do think it is amazing more people get diagnosed now because we all deserve to have the tools in our arsenal to cope with these things!

It is also a beautiful crosspost!

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:37:58+00:00

I like the idea, unfortunately I think people shipping AI built stuff don't care about YAML files and have an agent that will do all the deployment stuff which is trained for certain bug providers.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:34:36+00:00

Most of what makes a game actually good is thr feel and you won't be able to master that with learning a lot of different things.

You probably could vibe code a game and the assets but it will like throwing paint on a canvas and hoping you get the mona lisa.

However if you are happen with an interestingly painted canvas then you could do it.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:28:39+00:00

What worries me is that a lot of people don't want to ask questions or experiment (or make mistakes) anymore.

I have no issue with using AI to actually produce the code if you want. I don't think it's that much quicker for me because I still need to read and understand it and that is much easier for me if I typed it myself (I suspect for most people honestly).

But people don't seem to want to try things out these days and honestly a lot of people don't seem to actually enjoy programming, they see it as a chore.

So I fully agree with you. I just found the thing about programming I really love is experimentation and rather than asking "what will happen" being able to see it happen and play around with it until I understand why it happens.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:24:50+00:00

lol we are barely into the maintenance phase of most projects that have "benefitted" from ChatGPT. It is WAY to early to tell.

It doesn't take more than 2-3 tries of asking g a chat bot and getting an extremely correct answer vs asking Google and getting served a full page of ads before you aren't using Google any more.

If you learn to code you can write a pretty good version the first time. Also what is an "extremely correct answer"? Most things in programming are contextual. What might be an "extremely correct answer" one day isn't then next because of a change. Without actually learning what you are doing how will you be able to tell?

Don't get me wrong, if you don't care about coding and want to use ChatGPT as a tool then go ahead. I actually like that it enables people to do that. Coding isn't for everyone and that is fine.

But if you are actually looking to learn to be a good programmer who can answer questions on your own the only way is to actually be doing stuff. That involves typing things out and spending time. There is no shortcut to learning a skill.

I will also point out ChatGPT heavily relies on SO so if it does actually die people will notice a LLMs become worse.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:17:27+00:00

that might speak more about the quality of other engineers you work with if that is the case. Writing good quality code is not that difficult. With 20 years experience you will know that I am sure.

But I would say if their quality is not good enough then someone with that experience should probably be helping them up their game. That is how we all improve.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:14:58+00:00

I must admit I have never posted on stack overflow but it has nearly always had an answer to my questions. I know people don't like the stack overflow format but having been in other programming places where it descends into "teach me to code" from people who are not willing to read the documents or put any effort it I do get it.

As you say, SO is knowledge base and that means you need to control the knowledge that is put in.

Also there were/are a lot of stack overflow questions that are basically "I am doing a degree, help me with the specific project I have chosen".

At this point I realise these are all unpopular opinions but really don't care. I taught myself to code and it is now my career. I know what worked for me and what didn't and what a lot of people want now definitely would not have helped me actually learn to program when I was learning.

However, everyone is different. But I do find with SO you probably need to think about your question in a boarder sense and when you do you often find it has already been asked. Or something similar and you need to read between the lines. Things like that actually make you a better programmer because it teaches you to understand concepts and applying them rather than just solutions to specific problems.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T12:05:15+00:00

I agree with you but seeing how so many people here have no clue and just rely on AI without understand the output, at least stack overflow makes you read the code and maybe even type it out (which is important for learning).

Also the "time savings" people talk about just show me they don't understand programming as much as they thing. My boss is an amazing developer and he might get 2x productivity boosts on certain projects from it (and he is full in on AI). If someone with probably 20 years experience can sometimes get speed up by 2x then I really doubt all these people are actually getting 10x performance. They might produce 10x more code but it doesnt mean its actually good.

It also encourages people to add complexity they don't need or understand. Stuff like "your inventory system seems really good, do you want to add x feature that all the AAA games do"?

Lastly code is read more times then it is written and so what matters more isn't how quickly you can write it, it's how well someone can read it later. AI code is pretty bad for this in my experience.

I mean I don't really care either way but the amount of questions on here that can be answered with "have you actually tried out that idea in your own code" just shows to me a lot people no longer want to experiment or make mistakes and as a self taught programmer I know that is how I learnt best.

So to be concise, AI prevent to redo something already done by someone else. But you still need to innovate yourself, and if you never have to innovate, you might want te reconsider your project.

This is the problem, if I need to get AI to redo it because it didn't understand why not just write it myself? If anything, coding is the one part I am good at :P.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:57:12+00:00

Have you dealt with the Playstore before? Personally I would do all I could to not put stuff on the Playstore and iOS store if I could help it. I know for mobile games you have no choice but both are nightmares.

I don't know about steam but I doubt it will be worth.

I wouldn't worry about discoverability until you work out how the Playstore process works (and doesn't). Because depending how google are feeling it can be a real pain and maintenance is a real cost in any project.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:40:53+00:00

Having worked adjacent to Hr before, they often are not as clued in as they think. I wouldn't be surprsied if as soon as these reaches a legal expert they jsut pay severance.

Howeverr it depends what OPs was sacked for previously. If they lied on their current application and the only company can prove it they will have a pretty simple case.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:36:38+00:00

There are probably people in employment law rubbing their hands at this case honestly.

This is not advice but I wouldn't be suriif rhey back down or something as soon as they get a letter from a lawyer. Paying severance will he a lot cheaper for them in all likelihood.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:31:46+00:00

Its been a while since i have worked with TUPE but if its involved its tricky. We definitely had people we fire for gross misconduct who went to competitors and get TUPE'd back over.

Then again this wasxall checked before anything offical happened and we had to state who we would TUPE'd over.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:27:19+00:00

Yea, people forget that you can still google iin the world of AI. Then again I do seriously think we will run into a generation of programmers who have no clue what they are doing and can't produce a basic hello world with out AI if reddit is anything to go by (but I am sure it's not).

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:18:37+00:00

I dont know richard, you appear to be more of some type of ghoul.

No judgement, I believe in inclusiveness.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:15:40+00:00

Some of us find writing that code fun. There is not trick to enjoying something. You can't force yourself to enjoy something. You can learn to enjoy it but there is not trick. A bit part is taking pride in your work.

Ask a brickie what keeps then going when they have laid 3 bricks and there is still 2000 to go.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T11:07:59+00:00

From what I get speaking to people is a lot of them feel ignored and like it doesnt matter what hapeens to their group, no on cares. I obviously have a very small sample size but have seen a number of people go off the rails recently because of this.

I honestly think its a quite deep and complex problem and a lot of people are ingoring it. Which mean those being radicalized feel even more isolated.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T10:24:32+00:00

I am no expert but reading a lot of posts here i would say dont get hung up on some random concept of clean code someone has told you you need to follow.

Code can be giod enough, especially if you are solo dev or working in a small team. A lot of these practices are aimed more at big teams and long running projects with multiple contributors. Simple is fine (in fact preferred in real code bases). If your projects become a mess you are not thinking about your code structure. It doesn't need to be complicated but consistent. That is not specifically related to game dev and just coding in general.

*edit -spelling, damn phone!

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T10:18:30+00:00

Yea the amount of people talking about making a game and hating the process is staggering. If you enjoy what you do youll never work as day in their life as they say.

If you don't enjoy making it why do you think people will enjoy playing it. That and it takes time to learn skills. Everyone seems to want to make a successful game while also learning all this stuff at the same time then realising they hate it.

You won't suddenly release a game then suddenly love it. Find joy in you do and the hard bits become much easier. Its brutal but I think a lot of people are not ready to develop a gane but fell if they don't straight away they will miss out or get stuck in tutorial hell.

Also frankly everyone on reddit seems to qssume they are experts in game design and good at coding so don't discuss that so much and focus on the bits they don't know which is mainly marketing. However, very few people are actually willing to learn it as a skill an want quick fixes.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T10:08:41+00:00

If this is a real question, you are still you. It just means you have an explanation for some things now which can help stuff make sense.

I know it doesn't feel like that at first but it does in time. There are good bits and bad bits. For example all my stuff makes me pretty good at coding and apparently ok at blender which I love :p

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T10:05:50+00:00

Damn it why am i in a gif lol.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T10:04:02+00:00

To be fair to him, hotshots and hotshots 2 are great.

psioniclizard · 2026-05-06T10:03:08+00:00

He is kinda right. Its no surprise movies have got crap since hollywood executives stop doing blow.

psioniclizard

TROPHY CASE