I once managed the build system for a small software company. (The build system is responsible for compiling the software and packaging it for distribution to the customer. Every large software project has such a system.) One day, the build system developed a problem. It would no … | Continue reading
I was working as a software development engineer on a large team. I identified a tool (I'll call it Figlets) that could streamline our code review process. Not having what Figlets provided was significantly affecting my workflow, so I decided to integrate it myself. Integrating … | Continue reading
You're the product owner of the Widget System at your company, and folks have opinions about Widget Systems. So sometimes people will come to your desk with opinions. They'll say something like, "I think Widgets should have a Doodads feature." Either: Doodads are the next thin … | Continue reading
I was for a while moonlighting as an independent game developer. I had previously released two moderately successful games, but I was unhappy with the quality of the tools I had written. My data serializers were a one-day hack, my renderer was ugly, my entity system was out of da … | Continue reading
As a video game engineer working on a large team, I once overheard a hallway conversation between Paul and Melanie about whether the team should use networked properties or RPCs to send data from game servers to clients. As a game programmer I have a multitude of opinions on this … | Continue reading
You and Kara are designers of a product at a mid-size company. Kara wants to add an icon to your product. You think the icon is wrong. You’ve added similar icons in the past and they were complete failures with your customer. You feel responsible for preventing Kara from making t … | Continue reading