Valve Talk at Harvard CS50 Course – Portal Problems

youtube.com

28 points·doppp··5 comments

I find it really fascinating that one of the prevailing themes throughout this talk was "in game development, good enough goes a long way." I wonder if it applies to other fields of development as well.

I find that to be case in SaaS. Better is the enemy of good enough.

There are a lot of areas on this topic that interests me.

Just look at graphics, specifically say beach waves. We now have super advanced looking deep water, but I've never seen any game even try to replicate beach waves, apart from some basic texture effects where the water goes in and out.

On the other side, I don't think I've ever heard a single comment about it from reviewers or players.

Of course as soon as someone does do it, then you're going to be hearing about everyone else lacking it in every review.

Consulting.

Yes, the code might look horrible in many cases, but at the end of the day most business don't care 1 second about software that isn't what they are good at, they are good at doing other stuff.

So if the software keeps their business running, while improving whatever business case they wanted changed, that is what matters above all.

Working software beats beautiful code that failed to meet deadlines.

Thanks for posting the video, OP. It was really interesting. Shame it didn't get very many comments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com