Mike Acton is also a game programmer. Maybe it's just because of the sources I tend to read, but I do think the game industry is leading the way here and I hope others will follow. Perhaps it's because of the focus on performance, but I think any industry could benefit from that. I curse the lack of attention to performance in modern software development every time the Twitter app takes multiple seconds to load on my 2 GHz smartphone.
> maintenance is comparatively less important
I don't agree with this. Certainly maintainability is less of a concern for the gameplay code specific to each game, but game development also encompasses engines and tools which span multiple titles and are used for many, many years. Also, the trend toward free-to-play and subscription games is making maintenance more of a concern even for single titles. World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Clash of Clans; these titles are going to be maintained for years to come. Valve Corporation recently transplanted an entire game (DotA 2) from one game engine to another, while people continued to play.
>I curse the lack of attention to performance in modern software development every time the Twitter app takes multiple seconds to load on my 2 GHz smartphone.
I strongly agree with the sentiment, but also it should be noted that the load time of applications is related more to the storage speed, which is often abysmally bad in phones.
If they didn't have so much code (and data) to load in the first place, a lot of it probably unnecessary, applications would certainly load much faster.
People who aren't performance obsessed programmers enjoy detailed graphical interfaces, and those tend to require lumps of code and data. It's fine to decry it I guess, but it won't be changing any time soon.
They're allowed to do it because of the emphasis on "shipping" and the complete lack of "maintaining" that they have to do afterwards. Most games on release are complete shit for a reason, with very few modern exceptions. Hell it isn't uncommon for a studio to outsource ports and expansions. Making their code someone else's problem is not something non software devs should aspire to.
> maintenance is comparatively less important
I don't agree with this. Certainly maintainability is less of a concern for the gameplay code specific to each game, but game development also encompasses engines and tools which span multiple titles and are used for many, many years. Also, the trend toward free-to-play and subscription games is making maintenance more of a concern even for single titles. World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Clash of Clans; these titles are going to be maintained for years to come. Valve Corporation recently transplanted an entire game (DotA 2) from one game engine to another, while people continued to play.