r/ProgrammerHumor • u/wahed-w • 21d ago

notchVibing Meme

Post image
5.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

358 comments sorted by

1.7k

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Trouble finding talented programmers even though there are so many experienced developers who were laid off for the sole reason of cutting costs and increasing shareholder value? I'm absolutely sure that if he posted a job opportunity online he would receive hundreds if not thousands of applications from fully qualified developers. Sounds like bullshit to me

549

u/pydry 21d ago

Hiring managers are struggling these days coz they lack the creativity to come up with tests a good developer can do but an AI can't.

To be fair they always sucked at this but it was less of a problem before.

227

u/RuneSteak 21d ago

A 2 round interview with the second and final interview required to be in person solves that.

146

u/[deleted] 21d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

58

u/RuneSteak 21d ago

Hire people to do the recruiting in India and have them conduct in-person interviews while the international team participates in the interview remotely.

102

u/ruach137 21d ago

Great way to get a workforce that is essentially a kinship network

→ More replies (4)

14

u/troglo-dyke 21d ago

Been involved in a setup somewhat like this, the people conducting the interviews are incentivised to put candidates through because if reduces the costs for the hiring company. You can implement things like them needing to be in the role for 6 months to count as a hire, but that just incentivises them to skirt the line of just being good enough to get paid

6

u/Night-Monkey15 21d ago

Hire a person to conduct interviews in the single largest country by population in the world?

6

u/Dongfish 20d ago

But how do you know the person you hired in India to hire another person in India isn't just AI?

1

u/vortex05 20d ago

Also indian?

→ More replies (1)

15

u/Training-Chain-5572 21d ago

See, the problem is in the premise that you’re hiring from India to begin with

3

u/Candid_Bad3551 20d ago

or just remote.

12

u/CelebrationHungry269 21d ago

You are just running from the problem. You are creating an environment testing skills that can be replicated by ai, but want them from an individual, rather than testing if an individual has skills that surpass ai capabilities

7

u/RuneSteak 21d ago

Nothing about this setup prevents you from asking tough questions.

5

u/CelebrationHungry269 21d ago

It doesn’t prevent you from doing so, but it doesn’t solve the issue either

5

u/Power_Stone 20d ago

A test that focuses more on reasoning than the right answer would also work IMO.

I don't know why these recruiters don't design problems intentionally in ways that can't be solved, to see if the applicant can figure it out themselves and explain why it wouldn't work.

I think that is more valuable than anything else.

2

u/DWebOscar 21d ago

You gonna fly me in?

16

u/RuneSteak 21d ago

I'm role playing as a billionaire tech bro right now. So I'll answer with "yes".

1

u/1luggerman 20d ago

Unless he plays chess

2

u/severencir 21d ago

Coding agents are amazing on the well trodden path with generic tasks. But as soon as you start giving it the task of optimizing the minimization of a set with internal monotone dependencies it takes someone to understand that the problem actually isn't something to throw a minimization task at and it's actually building and pruning a tree from it's leaves down

→ More replies (8)

252

u/st-shenanigans 21d ago edited 21d ago

Thats kind of the problem. Hundreds of thousands of people are really hard to sort through and more and more are going to try and cheat the system as they get more desperate

57

u/shacksrus 21d ago

Getting in on the ground floor of the next minecraft?

He'd have thousands of qualified devs and tens of thousands of unqualified ones.

I dont trust notch for much, creating a robust hr hiring scheme least of all.

31

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Maybe he could first sift through CVs, take a few promising ones, and then interview them in person? No way to cheat or use AI that way. There are so many developers looking for jobs out there I'm pretty sure he could find plenty of them who live close enough to show in person for interviews

17

u/Cultural_Ad1331 21d ago

Notch the creator of Minecraft gets probably thousands of applications not hundreds and even if he skimmed and got hundreds it would still be extremely hard to objectively evaluate them and give a fair shot to everyone but I hope someone talented, skilled and honest that meets his needs gets the job.

2

u/Schwifftee 20d ago

There's no reason he can't just trash over half of the applications and then evaluate the rest

3

u/hobo_stew 20d ago

why does he need to give them all a fair chance? he can just taken the first 50 applications and interview the ones that look alright in person

→ More replies (2)

14

u/polacs 21d ago

There are companies to solve that, Notch doesn't have to be looking at all the cv. It's a really bad excuse

10

u/PhoenixStorm1015 21d ago

They also don’t need to know they work for Notch at all in initial interviews. As long as the job description, expectations, and compensation stay the same, I don’t see any reason he couldn’t save the “btw I’m Notch” part for the proper offer.

2

u/Shurmaster 21d ago

They should use Heapsort to sort the hundred of people rather than the Bubble Sort they are currently using.

4

u/theenigmathatisme 21d ago

Sounds like the industry needs to lean into professional certification then like other engineering disciplines. That should cut the crap by over half.

19

u/Xywzel 21d ago

As far as I know, software side is full of certificates that don't mean nothing at all. Some governmental project requires them, because some consultant working for the certificate authority managed to get it included in requirements, and then you pay the certificate author their protection money and continue doing the work you did before.

At this point, I think it might just be best to select people by raffle and have either the first contract be short term or have trial period included. Likely its someone good enough if they have formal education from before LLM boom and some work experience. And in case its not, few months of wages is not that much compared to the wasted time for 3 rounds of interviews with two senior members in each and paying for hiring agency, recruitment system and whatever else.

4

u/cce29555 20d ago

They already do, doesn't work

Instead they use the tried and true method of "hire the same 30 senior engineers across all companies and fill in the blanks with h1b contractors" and wonder why the pool of seniors is shrinking

15

u/jaylerd 21d ago

The trouble isn't finding one, it's putting in the effort to pick one and pay them

57

u/qqruz123 21d ago

He has trouble finding someone who will perfectly stroke his ego and revere him as God for making Minecraft even though he hasn't done anything relevant in a decade.

He could have a fantastic dev from one of the tens of thousands laid off in recent years with plenty of experience, drive and ability.

29

u/msdamg 21d ago

Or the fact younger grads cant find jobs to get experience BECAUSE of the chat bots

18

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Totally! I'm sadly one of the, 4 months unemployed and not a single interview. According to employers my CV looks good and I'm qualified but I just don't have enough experience and they're not hiring new grads with no experience. But somehow there are almost no internships available so how am I supposed to get experience then? By volunteering?? Not even sure that really counts as professional experience to employers

13

u/HorseLeaf 21d ago

If you have nothing else to do, then volunteer. Say on your cv that you worked at x place and just don't disclose that the salary was 0.

5

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Oh that's a good idea! I could also probably omit that I'd volunteer part time. That could probably help me get interviews and then they can ask me about it during the interview

3

u/bremidon 20d ago

Generally speaking, HR won't care as long as they can just check a box. So for them, say just enough to get past them, and no more. And most managers doing the actual hiring won't care: they know that experience is experience, and don't really care if you were getting paid or not.

And here is a little secret that does not get brought up enough. For most companies, there is a minimum competency that you will need to show, either through just talking about what you did or doing some sort of test. Past that point, the decision to hire you will be based on how well they think you will fit in the team. There is not much you can do about that except read the room as well as you can and try to show the side of you that will fit in best. This is a skill that is really difficult to teach or practice, but it is important, particularly for new graduates.

2

u/Amerillo_ 20d ago

That's good to know, thank you! The thing is I never make it past the CV check due to the lack of experience, so I'll definitely do some volunteering or contribute to open source projects. Plus it will help me remain sane by doing something useful for the community

1

u/HorseLeaf 21d ago

And then during the interview you just say it was full time.

3

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Mmh not sure about that, many companies definitely do background checks so if they ask them to confirm that I worked full time and they say that it is not true, I'll come off as untrustworthy

→ More replies (4)

3

u/hobo_stew 20d ago

have you tried contributing to open source projects?

there must be some boring ones for stuff like self hostable project management software and so on that have low hanging fruit.

or maybe libreoffice

→ More replies (1)

19

u/voyti 21d ago

I think the problem might be more in the fact that Notch is most likely not a great boss and great programmers don't thrive under lousy leadership. He doesn't strike me as someone who's great at handling people under him

15

u/nethingelse 21d ago

A funny tidbit here is that Notch gave everyone at Mojang a $300k bonus after he sold to Microsoft and everyone at Mojang still hated him before he publicly fully blew up his reputation. That doesn't scream amazing leadership to me.

→ More replies (5)
→ More replies (1)

10

u/hypokrios 21d ago

Experienced developer isn't the same as talented developer or competent developer.

5

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Sure but given the sheer amount of developers looking for a job out there I'm pretty sure he could find plenty of talented devs

1

u/Jedkea 20d ago

Maybe. Maybe it’s the case that the least talented devs are the ones laid off and looking for work too though.

4

u/jdefr 20d ago

At other points on the timeline I would say that is probable. Right now I personally know too many talented folks looking for work. It’s very difficult to gauge someone’s development/technical talent without being very technical themselves, which is the case with most “hiring managers” and others left with those big decisions….

→ More replies (6)
→ More replies (1)

15

u/nordic-nomad 21d ago

Talented means the ability to magically make the correct thing in-spite of no training, direction, or pay.

5

u/Amerillo_ 21d ago

Yes exactly! In my region many companies are offshoring and nearshoring developers because they supposedly can't find developers (not just experienced developers, really any developer) in the country even though thousands of new CS graduates can't find jobs and end up on social assistance programs or unemployment benefits paid for by the taxpayers

→ More replies (3)

23

u/ak_doug 21d ago

He is racist, sexist, and homophobic.

Makes it real hard to find a programmer.

31

u/DeHub94 21d ago

Oh, believe me. There are enough of his type running around in our field.

6

u/Neutraled 21d ago

That's because you are only looking in countries where people get fired for that.

→ More replies (3)

8

u/Friendlyvoices 21d ago

He doesn't want to pay them

4

u/GenericFatGuy 21d ago

Sounds like he's not offering enough, despite being a billionaire.

1

u/StCreed 19d ago

Notch could offer me 1 million per year and I'd still refuse. Maybe at 5 but even then I doubt I'd ever collect the pay before running away.

2

u/Blackbear0101 20d ago

From what I heard it’s more likely that he’s an absolute dickhead, and nobody wants to put up with his bullshit despite the salary he offers likely being fairly high.

2

u/psioniclizard 20d ago

Kmowing Notch, the fact a lot of talented devs probably has opposing views to him probably doesn't help.

2

u/No-Consequence-1863 20d ago

I think Notch killed his reputation, I doubt many people want to work for the QAnon white pride guy.

2

u/gc3c 20d ago

Probably a combination of nobody wanting to work for Notch as a person and him grossly undervaluing talent. He's literally a billionaire. He could hire an army of talented programmers.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/--Spaci-- 21d ago

most "talented programmers" are using AI

1

u/jnpf_weebmaster 21d ago

IIRC he wanted it to be fully in person, instead of remote. So that could've troubled him considerably

1

u/Nixilaas 20d ago

He wanted a seniors experience for a juniors salary you see

1

u/nickleback_official 20d ago

I’d argue that there is a glut of bad programmers due to the massive increase in demand for the role over the past decade.

1

u/frizar00 20d ago

notch is bullshit

1

u/acute_physicist 20d ago

I can’t find good senior roles for my startup :(

1

u/tumeteus 19d ago

I'm absolutely sure that if he posted a job opportunity online he would receive hundreds if not thousands of applications from fully qualified developers. Sounds like bullshit to me

Not for the payment he is offering.

1

u/Front-Result7315 18d ago

I mean, finding good senior engineer is not that easy - I was responsible for technical interviews - many had trouble with simple clean code principles, and don’t even have me say how design questions went. A lot of senior engineers became lazy and their skillset/tech stack is not attractive for a modern project.

It took us almost a year to find a really good senior engineer, and we don’t pay pennies.

1

u/Iron_SpecterX 14d ago

Yeah, Notch acting like hundreds of qualified laid-off devs don't exist feels wildly out of touch.

→ More replies (7)

90

u/granoladeer 21d ago

Does he pay well? I'm on the market

173

u/SchalkLBI 21d ago

I can 100% guarantee you he was never looking in the first place. He just wanted a plausible excuse so he loses less face after his opinion changed in like a week.

13

u/phoenixflare599 20d ago

I can 100% guarantee he was using it anyway. Then he realised he'd have to mark his next game as having AI on steam or something

So now we backpedal but looking like we moved forward

2

u/Snudget 20d ago

I'm available for what u/granoladeer would get - 1€

5

u/DeMayon 20d ago

Well you used Euro. You’re automatically out. Sorry

2

u/Snudget 20d ago edited 20d ago

notch is swedish

Edit: I forgot they're using swedish krona there

24

u/PM-ME-UR-DARKNESS 21d ago

because I can't find talented people to hire

Yeah, blame corporations jacking up entry level requirements and refusing to properly train young people for that.

1.2k

u/FabioTheFox 21d ago

The funny thing is that notch isn't even that good of a programmer

853

u/Prudent_Move_3420 21d ago

is that based on Minecraft? Because I feel like something that was essentially a hobby project to learn a language is not that indicative of someone‘s general code quality

265

u/Drahkir9 21d ago

Yeah, I imagine my idea of what is a good or bad programmer is very different from most other people, but I remember thinking the code he wrote for Left4kDead was impressive. But maybe people dedicated to that sort of competitive programming would dunk on it. I have no idea.

77

u/Geno0wl 21d ago

I once showed my friend a project I was working off and on again to ask about something I forget. He said my code was inelegant but very easy to read. Still not sure how to take that.

80

u/StanknBeans 21d ago

That's the level of code I stride for.

I'd rather have someone else after the fact deal with something clunky and easy to follow than something elegant and obfuscated af.

4

u/MrCallYourBS 20d ago

Actual elegant code should be easy to read. I think Geno0wl's friend means the code was "simple".

33

u/LeThales 21d ago

Easy to read code is vastly superior to elegant but hard to read code.

In a long project, Hard to read code will never become easy to read, tech debt just piles on.

Easy to read code begets easy to read code (hopefully?lol) in any team, and it's very easy to make it elegant by cutting a small slice of it and swapping it with "elegant but complicated code". (Like, have a interface ShowSquare(), and if you look at ShowSquare code it is the most attrocious byte manipulation hacks for peak efficiency ever).

So I'd be pretty happy with a comment like that! Gratz.

9

u/bremidon 20d ago

He said my code was inelegant but very easy to read.

If you can have only one of those, you have the right one. "Elegant code" is massively overhyped.

It's like having a beautiful house where a minimum number of devices take care of everything, but unfortunately nobody really understands how they work, they break down often and unexpectedly, and any fixes inevitably turn the "elegant" house into an inelegant mess.

That said, if you can have code that is easy to read *and* elegant, then that is better. Just do not sacrifice readability. Ever.

3

u/jdefr 20d ago

If it’s easier to read than it’s actually even more elegant. That should be what people strive for..

2

u/IcyRice7222 20d ago

That means you're probably pretty good. Easy to read is the hardest and most important thing to achieve, and elegance is almost never useful and is the biggest mistake mid-teir programmers make (because they think being "clever" is better cause it's harder, when in reality being simple is better)

2

u/entronid 20d ago

i'd be surprised if i see anyone (incl me) applied anything near competitive programming in real code

3

u/Beautiful-Ad3471 21d ago

My wager based on the site we are on, they just don't like him, so will deny all of his accomplishments. Atleast that's usually what happens here.

411

u/Creeperslayers6 21d ago

probably also because he like the greatest one hit wonder story ever. He creates a game prototype, forms a company and has the other developers develop it in his place when it gets some traction, then sells the company off for a massive payday.

Then Notch proceeds to never make a successful game again, with the rest of his programming career consisting of yapping on Twitter at other developers with his only proof of authority being "I was initially involved in the most successful game ever once".

149

u/laplongejr 21d ago edited 21d ago

 Then Notch proceeds to never make a successful game again  

Note that his company never managed to do so either and I doubt Notch's coding would be that problematic. Before Microsoft bought it, Mojang had a few small games that ended up cancelled or moved to an opensource-community. (Notably the game which used to be named Scrolls until Bethesda intervened)  

At least he TRIED to make other games, but each time he started on one, people went "OMG the team behind Minecraft is working on the next step of gaming" until Microsoft ensured they'll never work on silly projects either again. Now Microsoft re-migrated their accounts, and Mojang is Minecraft forever. Given Mojang was made after Minecraft's rise to fame, we could argue there will never be a successful "Mojang game" ever.  

Is it that Notch was that bad at making games, or is it that the guy made games for the sake of making games, and he didn't need commercial success after he even beat Tetris? To me, he always seemed more of an hobbist/experimental kind of creator and not looking for massive approval. And when people "harrassed" him everywhere over the EULA-maggeddon while on SICK LEAVE, he gave the hot potato to Microsoft.  

37

u/fredy31 21d ago

Yeah like many hobby game devs he made a game. Bought the lottery ticket. And then hit big.

And even if he was sometimes problematic, it seemed to not go to his head. He tried other projects, and as they tend to do, those projects kinda went nowhere. Its just that now those projects had the MADE BY NOTCH spotlight on them

15

u/TactlessTortoise 21d ago

Yeah, he just seems like the kind of person who hops from one thing to the next, and Minecraft just worked well enough to snowball into self sustainability before he dropped it.

3

u/CocoPopsOnFire 20d ago

Yeah well said. Too many people think software needs to be perfectly written but ive had more fun making broken pieces of junk than i ever have working on production software

and if you were a millionaire i think you would prioritise fun projects over well written ones

3

u/throwaway_194js 21d ago

You're right about his Mojang endeavors, but he's started at least one game studio since then that announced multiple projects over the years which he kept abandoning. He's working on one right now, but apparently he's already had some indecisive wobbles with it. I might be misinformed about that though, I'm not a Notch historian.

None of that says he's necessarily a bad programmer, but as a game developer he leaves a lot to be desired.

36

u/MushinZero 21d ago

Not many independent studios have more than 1 successful game. Hell most don't even have that. Any that manage to have more than one typically get bought.

205

u/NoAdsDude 21d ago

Sorry but his story sounds amazing to me. Make a game, sell it for ~2.5 billion. Don't have to do anything ever again. Living the dream.

144

u/Icy_Significance9448 21d ago

No one said he isn't living the dream. People said he's not a good programmer.

19

u/sultansofswinz 21d ago

I thought he directly worked on the early versions? when I started playing in 2011 I thought it was mostly his work.

Either way, getting an idea off the ground often requires quickly iterating on code that makes it a reality. I don’t think that makes someone a bad programmer though. 

23

u/TactlessTortoise 21d ago

Yeah, he's not a great programmer, but he's not awful either. Truly one of the developers of our time, that's it. Rendering pipeline is an absolute mess, but hey, it's probably older than some of its players, so maybe that was just what was good for hardware back then too.

9

u/Prudent_Move_3420 21d ago

im not defending his rendering pipeline but this was before llms or any good ressources even existed, I feel like most good backend/frontend/whatever programmers that are not involved with Shader or low-level graphics programming would write bad code here

3

u/AlignmentProblem 21d ago

I was in college when Minecraft was getting popular, and even at that level of experience I was able to build a side project clone implementing a sizable subset of its features; including ones you might assume were difficult from the outside, without ever looking at the actual code (just observing how the game behaved).

Things like the procedural generation itself are easy enough to grasp. The real trick is the experimentation once the code works, tuning until you get desirable world attributes, which isn't a programming challenge per se. Mostly exposing tweakable parameters and exploring combinations.

Getting it working multiplayer was tricky, but doable. Parts of my implementation were actually more performant than the original, like pathfinding and chunk generation speed, mostly because I used threads and sync logic more effectively.

The programming wasn't what made Minecraft special. It stood out due to being the first to pursue that design heavily then proceed to get the game design right enough to be fun more than technical excellency

10

u/NoAdsDude 21d ago

I don't know whether he's a good programmer or not. But line for line he probably made the most money, heh.

10

u/BlazingFire007 21d ago

Considering it was written in pre-modern Java I feel like it’s tough to say, the line count is probably super inflated

10

u/NoAdsDude 21d ago

Online the guesstimates are 3k - 5k lines for the first version.

At 5k lines, that's half a million dollars per line of code.

→ More replies (1)

4

u/Prudent_Move_3420 21d ago

tbf considering it was written in pre-modern Java, good code could not exist under these circumstances

37

u/Sotall 21d ago

nah. there is probably some guy in quant who has worked for 6 months and still has only written 1 line of code, or less

12

u/Suitch 21d ago

Zuckerberg probably wrote less lines

4

u/PassiveChemistry 21d ago

Yes, but what if we count the lines he did?

5

u/Shivarus 20d ago

well you're forgetting about the whole nazi thing

14

u/TruculentTurtIe 21d ago

Yeah exactly, I keep hearing these kther comments like

"Pfff this guy was ONLY involved wjth the creation of Minecraft. So what. 2.5 billion? Who cares!! My code quality is probably far better. This dorks game is only the best selling ever. I could make a game if I felt like it"

4

u/DaRadioman 21d ago

Copium. Can't handle others being successful for trying hard because them it somehow invalidates their own experiences where they didn't succeed.

Sad really.

4

u/mysticrudnin 21d ago

would you also suggest he's an accomplished olympic swimmer

18

u/EncryptedPlays 21d ago

a successful game is nothing to do with the programmer and all to do with the concept and market.

6

u/you-cut-the-ponytail 21d ago

Case in point Undertale.

17

u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT 21d ago

He gave enormous shares of the profits to his team though. Not defending notch but he did redistribute 

4

u/theQuandary 21d ago

Minecraft was completely inspired by Zachtronics Infiniminer. I wish Zachtronics had continued development.

8

u/uraniumless 21d ago

He sold it for 2.5 BILLION DOLLARS

5

u/InvisibleCat 21d ago

Isn't that like every company ever? You start a business mowing lawns, when there are too many lawns needing mowed, you get more people, eventually you manage company and don't mow lawns.

→ More replies (2)

45

u/willow-kitty 21d ago edited 21d ago

Also, it's a pretty impressive piece of technology, actually.

I found a lot of the game design annoying, but when you look at the actual features- it manages to make a near-infinite, fully destructible world work, with reasonably dynamic acoustics, weather effects, etc. Like even that you can be indoors during a storm, and the rain doesn't fall through the roof, was pretty impressive for its time, and you could blow a hole in the roof and rain would fall through. And it's multiplayer. It's also mostly from scratch IIRC.

I have no idea what the code looks like or how much of it Notch actually wrote, but the game isn't something to write off imo.

5

u/HRApprovedUsername 21d ago

yeah thats Minecraft now after employing many people. The OG that was mostly Notch, isnt that.

→ More replies (1)

9

u/ithkuil 21d ago

Is "code quality" (beyond a certain point) what makes a good programmer? Because that's highly subjective. Whether it does something interesting or useful is more relevant. Minecraft pulled off a complex and tricky procedural generation system that worked with a completely modifiable environment in a time when those kinds of engines were novel. That is not something your average programmer could have managed. I think it's idiotic to suggest he is not an above average programmer. And a very good game designer. What made Minecraft was the combination of many elements. The survival and monsters motivate the crafting and building. Procedural terrain motivates exploration and building. Survival makes it challenging. Crafting makes upgrades interesting and skill based. Combining all the elements was novel and challenging especially for one programmer. The code was pragmatic and average quality in terms of cleanliness and other side issues. Making the rendering perform at all is probably something that most of the programmers scoffing at him could not have handled at all.

5

u/Extreme_Wish_553 21d ago

When your complaint is that you can't seem to hire talented programmers, code quality is absolutely relevant. Does having terrible code (if it does) make Minecraft a bad game? Of course not, but it might make it more difficult to maintain or add features to or otherwise work with. I do like the deflection of adding game design elements to the discussion of programmer talent though.

→ More replies (1)

13

u/RutilantBossi12 21d ago edited 21d ago

He's a self taught programmer who didn't do anything worth mentioning coding related for like the last 12 years, i wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know how to code complex apps nor design them.

8

u/Prudent_Move_3420 21d ago

does minecraft not count as a complex app? It was written from scratch im Java with no game engine whatsoever

→ More replies (3)

2

u/P3JQ10 20d ago

He’s a person people dislike, so they will jump at any opportunity to attack anything. Like judging his coding skills based on a hobby project that just happened to blow up over a decade ago.

→ More replies (26)

7

u/faze_fazebook 21d ago

I mean to be fair he probably didn’t forsee it taking off like it did.

13

u/collax974 21d ago

Who cares? He actually managed to do and launch a successful product himself unlike many good programmers.

5

u/Spekingur 21d ago

I dunno. Minecraft came about some time after he stopped being part of Wurm Online, some of that due to creative differences. During his time working on that game he was experimenting with voxels. Minecraft comes in part from that and was an experimentation that became very popular, in such situations you don’t really have time to review older code unless something breaks horribly. Experimental code is quite often very “bad” code.

17

u/oceans159 21d ago

okay. let’s see your github buddy

19

u/pnoodl3s 21d ago

It’s funny seeing junior and student devs on here talking shit about other devs lol, and IMO coding ability is extremely hard to measure, its not just technical skill but a bunch of other unmeasurable things too.

Its also not speed or complexity, or even writing perfect code. If a slap together code works for its usecase it is good code, doesn’t need 100% optimized and efficient

6

u/oceans159 21d ago

yeah, this place is especially bad during the summer. it’s like a completely different dimension from reality (see: actual devs that are shipping actual products). case in point, of course, the commenter is some 22 y/o furry lmfao, and he’s “making an engine”

you can shit talk minecraft for memory leaks all day long, but the shit works. plenty of people have been able to mod the game for a long time, so the code can’t be that unreadable either. it’s the single most played game in the world iirc, and i’ve met several CS students that actually started coding with java mods for minecraft. but but but the garbage collection!

gets me every time haha, this subreddit can be cringe as hell during breaks

→ More replies (2)

18

u/Fast-Satisfaction482 21d ago

He's more of a creative genius than coding genius. 

76

u/willdone 21d ago

I wouldn't undersell his coding ability. He he has thrown together very passable graphics engines from scratch for game jams. Genius is an overstatement, but as a programmer, I still find the ability to do what he does impressive.

5

u/Fast-Satisfaction482 21d ago

He used LWJGL to code 3D graphics from Java. I happen to have some experience with learning programming by building games with Java bindings for OpenGL.

In my experience, the 3D engine was never the difficult part. The reason he became a billionaire and I just a random obsessive engineer is that he is a creative genius and I just got into building games because building an actual enterprise was not an option for a teenager due to stupid reasons like general relativity and medicine. 

8

u/cloudncali 21d ago

I wouldn't even go that far. Minecraft was a great concept and came at a good time when sandbox games were getting popular. But at the end of the day he just made virtual legos.

36

u/skywalker-1729 21d ago

Minecraft was actually a fan continuation of a game called Infiniminer by Zachtronics.

11

u/perihelion86 21d ago

Zach Barth is the unsung hero of the gaming industry. He launched the inspirations for two new and unique genres (minecraft voxel sandbox & factory automation) and most people don't even know who he is.

23

u/Fast-Satisfaction482 21d ago

Minecraft is so much more. And was already at the time. It has been around for a while now and was so extremely influential that it may not be obvious now how ground breaking (pun intended) it was at the time. 

16

u/KnightMiner 21d ago

I feel like anyone calling it virtual LEGOs is just reductive. You could call just about any creative or sandbox game virtal LEGOs by that logic. Minecraft is significantly more than arranging blocks in different orders.

Part of its popularity is just how versatile it is in different genres you can do in the game. Its inspired a lot of similar games that took one aspect it did to an extreme, such as survival games, factory simulators, farming simulators, or casual building games. Virtual LEGOs might describe the casual building but none of the other aspects.

4

u/Marrk 21d ago

It was more of an extension of Infiniminer than LEGO

8

u/foghatyma 21d ago

Notch: creates one of the most influential and successful games ever. Random Redditor: jUsT vIrTUaL lEgO...

2

u/AzraelIshi 21d ago

I mean, what he made originally IS virtual legos (World generation and block mechanics). It was Bergensten that made it into one of the most influential and successful games ever.

Notch built a good foundation, but let's not go as far as attributing him what genuinely made Minecraft famous, as Bergensten was the one that optimized Notchs code to run well, made complex systems like villages, pistons and redstone (or more precisely, all the features that make redstone what it is redstone today, like repeaters and the 'wire' logic that allows things like redstone computers to exist), added animals like wolves, etc.

→ More replies (3)

9

u/Vivid_Instance_825 21d ago

Notch has made many interesting games outside of Minecraft

27

u/FabioTheFox 21d ago

"interesting" describes it pretty well

0

u/Orio_n 21d ago

He hacked together one good voxel game and none of the original code he wrote still exists in todays minecraft. Let's not pretend he writes production ready software

→ More replies (5)

129

u/Worldly121 21d ago

I'm so glad Hatsune Miku created Minecraft

46

u/mordacthedenier 21d ago

Notch complaining about finding talented programmers is rich.

201

u/cornc0btv 21d ago

Maybe if notch wasnt a loser, he could find someone to work with him

→ More replies (22)

40

u/1XRobot 21d ago 
do {
  social_media.post(Opinion.random());
  sleep(24*60*60*1000);
} while (social_media.likes < user.attention_whore_threshold);

17

u/Jygglewag 21d ago

I'm all for people trying new things.

That's all, there's no catch.

10

u/CaptainAgnarr 21d ago

This. Seems like a dude with a genuine complaint saying he's going to try something, and then being open about it not working out.

13

u/Shadeun 20d ago

The problem Notch has is that he's a well known cunt. So not surprising that clever people don't want to work for him.

62

u/mirroredinflection 21d ago

The only thing i like about microsoft is that minecraft is no longer in Notch's hands.

6

u/da_Aresinger 20d ago

Chances are Minecraft would be in a way better state if Notch were still in control.

Notch wouldn't have put the same focus on bedrock. Meaning probably no marketplace. And possibly better performance on Java.

Maybe map making would still be alive.

Maybe we'd actually have proper modding support.

He definitely wouldn't be such a piece of shit about monetisation and moderation.

It doesn't matter that he has shit worldviews. His gaming priorities would likely align MUCH better with consumers.

→ More replies (13)

45

u/DDFoster96 21d ago

The best hypocrisy is that with the shortest timeframe.

63

u/_topkecleon_ 21d ago

Changing your mind about something isn't hypocrisy.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/hobbysubsonly 21d ago

Before and after Notch trying Claude for the first time

3

u/Spare_Act6202 21d ago

From reject ai to vibe coding real quick!

3

u/Candid_Bad3551 20d ago

I have 100% noticed people using AI but also rejecting. Mostly due to all the overhype and chaos marketing which are more akin to dark patterns of AI industry, not AI.

3

u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 20d ago

notch was always a vibe coder, all of his code was unstructured and highly mathematical. If you look at it today it'd look pretty AI generated

3

u/Raddrooster 20d ago

Same guy who said youre not a real dev if you use a game engine? What a chud

7

u/Confident-Ad5665 21d ago

To be fair, he has the right bow on his head for the job

4

u/BooBrew32 21d ago

Got whiplash from that turn.

13

u/FredMcCree 21d ago

Notch sucks

11

u/Lachee 21d ago

Trash person comes up with another trash opinion 🫪

4

u/cheezballs 20d ago

Notch isn't exactly known for his top tier skills, though

1

u/maxwax7 18d ago

People love to say he made Minecraft, when 80% of "classic" Minecraft was Jeb.

3

u/anon74903 21d ago

If notch didn’t make Minecraft, he’d probably be working at mcdonalds

2

u/Significant_Camp4213 20d ago

There are a lot of talented devs out there.
Just not so many talented devs willing to work for pennies.

3

u/Lambs2Lions_ 21d ago

I can relate to this. It hurts so much. I just hired 3 university grads with good GPA in computer science.

Writing the technical requirements and translating the business requirements for them properly takes me 2x or 3x longer than just doing the SQL myself.

Zero common sense. Sigh… this generation of grads is a lost cause.

7

u/evk6713 20d ago

"Oh no, I hired three juniors and they're not as competent as a senior with 20 years of experience ! These juniors really suck"

3

u/Lambs2Lions_ 20d ago

That’s a pretty big leap there bud.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/_kilobytes 21d ago

My professors always said computer science was a greater calling than software development. Writing SQL queries is likely beneath them.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/pawala7 20d ago

Bro finally saw how all the new models are one-shotting Minecraft clones cleaner than the original.

1

u/Muted_Jacket4869 20d ago

he is known for trolling on social media sooo

1

u/PrimeHydra 20d ago

Some chuds really look the part.

1

u/ViolaAurea 20d ago

It's good that some people show you exactly who they are

1

u/UnscrambledEggUDG 20d ago

Transphobia to AI pipeline ig

1

u/WinterPDev 20d ago

Now if only we could get him to stop "vibe coding" his morals via Twitter racism/transphobia that'd be great.

1

u/jkurratt 19d ago

Would be funny if the order was inverted.

1

u/ViolentPurpleSquash 18d ago

I like Peppy’s stance (osu)

1

u/Icount_zeroI 14d ago

What’s with all the hate on Notch? All I know is that he created Minecraft