Apparently "Programming Is Hard" for Epic Games | Unpacked

If Nick or anybody else reading this is interested in actually looking outside of your own bubble, there are plenty of programmers who use ai tools daily to get their job done. Not by companies who want to fire expensive staff and hire cheap non-programmers, but by actual programmers who knows how to program “by hand” but who chose to enhance their productivity by using the right tool for the job. I don’t always like this, in fact I would like to be able to swing my magic wand and make the whole AI thing disappear but that’s not going to happen. If you (Nick or anybody else) has aspirations to do any kind of analysis of things, you should try to find people with differing opinions and points of view and engage with those in good faith. I can highly recommend reading Manton Reece’s blog (manton.org). Reece is an indie developer (apps, not games) who’s been working for many decades. His latest project is micro.blog and he has warmly embraced a lot of AI tools to get more done with his small team.

Boasting about the startup speed in comparison to Steam is so weird to me. Okay, I have to wait 5s less on the app that starts in the background with my computer. What about real FEATURES, did you innovate something there?

This is how you end up with absolutely no one with the expertise to do things that can be done cheaply with AI. And then the cabal of companies who control AI, now the source of the lost expertise, start charging you to come to the tap. If "the perfect is the enemy of the good", AI threatens to make it, "The good-enough (and cheap) is the enemy of anything better."

I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Epic isn't much of a design studio. Their bread and butter is Unreal Engine and skin swaps in Fortnite, what do they know about creativity. RIP Epic, just go away and take Fortnite and Unreal with you. WE WILL REBUILD.

Tim's optimistic about it? Yeah, sure, the CEO has nothing to worry about regarding the tech that can leave many people unemployed and still gives him a crap ton of money. Also, Nick, Tim provided examples on how AI is SoooOOoo good: The Epic Launcher loads faster now than Steam by a few seconds! ... ... ... A programmer who could do that themselves probably got laid off . Or worse, they got laid off while working on that and their work just got handed over to Claude when they were gone. By the way, I tested that "Restore from System Tray" and my Steam loaded immediately while my Epic launcher took a few seconds. Not to mention they do not say what any of those "13 different hardware configurations" are. So I'm going to take the only chart they provide here to show AI is good as "in test lab conditions" while results in the wild "may vary".

There is a tangible pride of when people (mostly men, I guess) make something with "AI" that imitates the real thing that eerily reminds me of the pride about the first poo of a potty-traning toddler.

The very idea of this game feels AI generated. I’m honestly surprised they weren’t vibe coding it from day one.

If there are two things Gen Zers love to do with their cash, it’s supporting AI and IPs that peaked when they were toddlers.

“Programming is hard”? Then find a new line of work. Honestly, how do these chucklefucks stay in power?