Re: Data oriented programming

Mat Noguchi <[email protected]> Wed, 6 Oct 2010 12:02:23 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.games.devel.sweng
Message-ID <D7F4D9E414140644BF099886C28C6636350DD885CB@bngexchange01.bungie.bng.local>
I was responding specifically to this:

> Apply natural selection: If you don't care about performance from day 1, 
> then manipulability wins over performance. Thus ends the tale.

Which was stated by Richard Fabian, not you.

MSN
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Fabian Giesen
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 11:53 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Sweng-Gamedev] Data oriented programming

On 06.10.2010 09:53, Mat Noguchi wrote:
> I think you overestimate anyone's ability to predict the actual
> difficulties of shipping and underestimate the ability of programmers to
> bash a system into submission. Unless you are talking about the mean and
> not possibilities.

Why do so many people on this list insist on turning this into a 
dichotomy? It's not. I completely agree that no amount of planning ahead 
will prevent you from having to change important parts of your codebase 
late in the project because your assumptions turned out to be wrong. I 
also agree trying to get everything perfect the first time round is a 
fool's errand. (And I doubt anyone with software development experience 
disagrees).

But I'm somewhat baffled that my suggestion of, in effect, "think before 
you type" is actually being met with resistance. Just because I can't 
fully predict the performance implications of a system in advance 
doesn't mean it's a waste of my time to think about it at all. And, in 
my experience anyway, *not* thinking about it in advance is a waste of 
mine and other people's time some months down the road.

Same thing with the testing. Again, it's not a dichotomy. Just because I 
think that testing is too late in the process to easily fix performance 
problems doesn't mean that performance testing is worthless, it just 
makes it a bad choice for your first line of defense.

-Fabian
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