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yambam • today at 7:03 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

This reminds me of a couple decades ago when some friends and I set ourselves a challenge to, individually, each create as much of a Pac-Man clone as possible in 10 hours. None of us had any experience in games programming or graphics coding. It was great fun and we all learned a lot.

No-one ended up with a complete clone but I loved how we all ended up focusing on different things, like pixel-perfect graphics versus accuracy in gameplay, and how we all brought our existing skills to the challenge despite not really knowing what we were doing.

I expect if we had AI models available it would have ruined the pleasure of figuring it out for ourselves. I feel kind of sad for the next generation of developers who won't have that experience.


Replies

OJFord • today at 7:56 AM

I think you figure out different things for yourself; the next generation is going to have 'programming' appeal to them for different reasons. More creatives. More engineers, perhaps, as the practice becomes more about the bigger picture.

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