Comment by RHSeeger
1 day ago
I can't reply to the person that replied to you, so
> You’re looking as a dev, but the reality is that a consumer cannot see technical debt.
The consumer can't _see_ technical debt, but they sure as heck can be impacted by it.
- Technical debt means the code base is harder to work with later. So fixes/enhancements take longer to make it into the code (and sometimes never can)
- This particular type of technical debt means the code by the game developers sets precedent, and the next developer may us it as an example. So the amount of code incorrectly using the api grows faster over time
For some reason HN sometimes hides the reply button on leaf comments. I think this only happens for very new comments.
You can click the timestamp ("X minutes ago") to view the comment without context, and reply from there.
I think it's a anti flamewar tactic to put the brakes on quick replies.
>the next developer may us it as an example
These hacks are game specific, so another developer wouldn't get them.
The way the API was used incorrectly "worked", and the game didn't see the negative impact of it because it was "fixed away". And then the incorrect usage is used again on another game and doesn't get the "fixed away" benefit. And the same incorrect usage could happen over and over because "it works".
The next developer at that company that uses or references the crappy code for another project would still have the issue, but not get the benefit of the down-stream GPU vendor hacks to fix the buggy game.