Hacker News: jsharpe

New comment by jsharpe in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

jsharpe — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:44:39 +0000

Measuring tech skill by how many tabs you have open is like measuring carpentry skill by how disorganized your workshop is.

New comment by jsharpe in "Goodbye to Sora"

jsharpe — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:04:45 +0000

I think the real answer is that Sora-style AI slop videos just aren't as addictive as we thought they'd be.

I let my kids have access to the app in the hope they would be inoculated against being obsessed with AI video and it actually worked. They got bored in like 2 days.

It simply doesn't compare well with handcrafted short form videos that are already plentiful on TikTok (which I absolutely don't let my kids watch).

New comment by jsharpe in "Evaluating Godot (2023)"

jsharpe — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 05:19:00 +0000

If you're interested in making and finishing a game, there is no good argument to be made for writing your own engine unless you have some very very specific rendering requirements (e.g. you want your game to be in hyperbolic space or something, or have 3D portals).

In every other case by writing your own engine you'll be wasting your time on a million already solved problems instead of actually, you know, making a game.

If you're interested in game engine development, or graphics programming, and not so much in finished games, then you can write some engine code as an educational exercise, though.

New comment by jsharpe in "You Had No Taste Before AI"

jsharpe — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:42:28 +0000

> Contrariwise, it's possible (but harder) to have no sense of taste and merely copy what most would regard as "good taste" and be perceived as having "good taste."

Not only possible, but exactly what AI does. :)

New comment by jsharpe in "Formatting code should be unnecessary"

jsharpe — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 23:58:07 +0000

Exactly. This idea comes up time and time again, but the cost/benefit just doesn't make sense at all. You're adding an unbelievable amount of complex tooling just to avoid running a simple formatter.

The goal of having every developer viewing the code with their own preferences just isn't that important. On every team I've been on, we just use a standard style guide, enforced by formatter, and while not everyone agrees with every rule, it just doesn't matter. You get used to it.

Arguing and obsessing about code formatting is simply useless bikeshedding.

New comment by jsharpe in "Universal Basic Income isn't about free money – it's about a freer life"

jsharpe — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 19:39:02 +0000

What a strange position this is (from the link): "the future of work is being more than one deviation from the statistical norm"

This by definition can apply to only 16% of people who are at least one deviation above the mean.

What about the other 84%?

New comment by jsharpe in "Why is everybody knitting chickens?"

jsharpe — Thu, 29 May 2025 15:47:23 +0000

I feel this may be an appropriate place to link this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkDJueqppHo

New comment by jsharpe in "Write to Escape Your Default Setting"

jsharpe — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 04:29:35 +0000

I feel the exact same way. I see a lot of benefits to writing by hand, but it is just so unbelievably, painfully SLOW, compared to my typing.

Working Fast and Slow

jsharpe — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 19:10:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.seangoedecke.com/working-fast-and-slow/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976274

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by jsharpe in "Is My Blue Your Blue?"

jsharpe — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 02:08:53 +0000

Exactly my thoughts! Thanks for putting it so clearly.

New comment by jsharpe in "I read the dictionary to make a better game (2023)"

jsharpe — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 02:00:57 +0000

Yup, that's a really good point. I kind of wish I had marked ambiguous words on a first pass, and then taken a bit of a different approach for a second pass of just the difficult ones.

New comment by jsharpe in "I read the dictionary to make a better game (2023)"

jsharpe — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 01:59:56 +0000

I don't, unfortunately. I'm trying to avoid having a dedicated backend for this so there are Google Analytics but they don't allow that granular of a metric.

That definitely could be something interesting, but I'd probably need a decently larger player base to get enough data, considering how many words are possible.

New comment by jsharpe in "I read the dictionary to make a better game (2023)"

jsharpe — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 18:27:21 +0000

I did consider this but the effort of doing a full dictionary pass is a lot to ask for marginal improvement and I don't know anyone quite as obsessed as me who would do it. Paying someone would be possible, but finding the right combination of "willing to do it for pay" and "I trust their judgement" is hard.

In practice, the way I approach this is by reacting to complaints from players who either don't know words I included or were disappointed I didn't include a particular word.

I read the dictionary to make a better game (2023)

jsharpe — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 16:21:49 +0000

Article URL: https://taugames.ca/blog/dictionary.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40876077

Points: 14

# Comments: 10

New comment by jsharpe in "Some people with insomnia think they're awake when they're asleep"

jsharpe — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:26:08 +0000

Those are rookie numbers. I have often set my alarm for 40+ minutes before I "need" to be awake because I know that I will snooze the alarm several times before being conscious enough to force myself out of bed.

New comment by jsharpe in "The deconstructed Standard Model equation"

jsharpe — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 01:26:18 +0000

This is called an equation but I don't see an equals sign anywhere. Is it implicit somehow? Or am I missing it?

New comment by jsharpe in "9999999999999999.0 – 9999999999999998.0"

jsharpe — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 16:52:56 +0000

Another example is open world games. They have to keep world coordinates centered on the player because for large worlds, the floating point inaccuracy in the far reaches of the world starts to really matter. An example of a game that does this is Outer Wilds.

New comment by jsharpe in "Unity plan pricing and packaging updates"

jsharpe — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 14:24:06 +0000

"Standard monthly rate" above that section of the fee table.

New comment by jsharpe in "Unity plan pricing and packaging updates"

jsharpe — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 14:21:39 +0000

They want 20% of that, PER MONTH.

New comment by jsharpe in "Unity plan pricing and packaging updates"

jsharpe — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 14:21:02 +0000

Charging a monthly fee on game installs is absolutely wild, considering that most games on Steam are one-time purchases. The personal fee (for first world countries) is $0.20 / month. If you charged $10 for the game, you'd be losing money after only 50 months (around 4 years).