Post #2716199

2026-04-24 19:25 UTC

So a top-notch coder should always be *thinking* one level below what you're writing. If you can't easily tell what's happening in that lower level, then your code is probably too complex and/or meta, and you're creating "write only code" - a debugging or performance headache for your future self.

Replies (4)

@meltedcheese@c.im 2026-04-24 20:05

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place Absolutely. 💯 If nothing else, you can clobber yourself if you don’t know how data structures are implemented one level down. For example, I once had to use strings for implementing dynamic strided arrays. Lots of appending, prepending, insertion, deletion, etc. There was a x^2 penalty increase in memory and computation if you appended versus prepended! This was only evident at run-time. Luckily, someone else mentioned this online so I was able to make the optimization without suffering. You will be much happier if you know how your source language is implemented (compiled or interpreted).

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@mattpd@mastodon.social 2026-04-25 06:08

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place On that note, also like John Ousterhout's "Always measure one level deeper", https://al.radbox.org/doi/10.1145/3213770. > "If you want to understand the performance of a system at a particular level, you must measure not just that level but also the next level deeper. That is, measure the underlying factors that contribute to the performance at the higher level."

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@robertklaschka@mastodon.online 2026-04-25 07:59

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place this reminds me of a point made in my early architectural design (buildings) career that you need to understand a design at the scale below the scale you were drawing at.

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@pythno@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-25 08:50

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place Yes! Yes! Yes!!!

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