Re: sparse components

In the five games I've worked on, optimization and minimizing bugs were not even remotely correlated. In fact, by minimizing the potential for bugs, via reducing API surface area or enforcing structure or adding abstraction mechanisms that directly reflect the intent the client wants to accomplish, increases the magnitude of optimizations you can make.

Going the opposite way, that is, providing generic solutions to hard problems that don't reduce complexity, makes it harder to do both.

Besides, OOP has nothing to do with implementation; it has to do with how you communicate between code and programmers.

MSN
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dan Nelson
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 1:09 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Sweng-Gamedev] sparse components

Long time lurker, first time poster.  After reading that blog entry by Mike Action, I have to add this:

(Lie #0) Maximizing performance is more important than minimizing bugs.

In every real-world game project I have ever worked on, bug counts consumed hundreds of times more man hours than optimization or performance work.  Any software engineering technique that helps a group of coders communicate and organize shared work, and thus minimize bugs, is hugely valuable.  OOP is great at that.

Other lies:

(Lie #4) A majority of game programmers are smart.  Smart enough to think about problems without "crutches" like OOP.
(Lie #5) A game is a static problem.  The data flow connections can be determined during a planning stage and will not change drastically over the course of the project.
On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Tom Plunket <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> I think really that it's the implementation of OOP that people have problems with when looking for performance.
People tend to bunch "everything" together.

The performance requirements for something that you're doing once a
frame is a lot looser than the requirements for something you need to
do a million times a frame.  Folks who say "OOP is bad" miss the point
(as has previously been pointed out).


-tom!

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