Still no idea what they actually do, other than maybe this is just some random site about building a community to "make better software".
Software isn't bad because engineers don't care. It's bad because eventually people need to eat food, so they need to get paid, which means you have to build something people will pay for, this involves tradeoffs and deadlines, so we take shortcuts and software is imperfect.
Caring is certainly a wide spectrum. I see the Handmade stuff being proudly on far end of it.
I'd use unrealistic to describe Handmade, proud is also accurate and works too
I'd like something better than Dolphin for Linux though, because Dolphin is absolute garbage. I'm going to have to write my own there.
Turns out spending some time understanding what your CPU and GPU are actually doing when running your app, and how to make them do less work, leads to pretty speedy software.
Then it also turns out that this does not seem to impede most of the features of the software it is competing with, meaning that software is by definition wasteful.
It can't even be argued that the other software made better use of human resources since it's a large team vs one guy who is often not even getting paid, and the guy is the one with the fast software.
The purpose of Handmade Hero was to show people that they are capable of making a game themselves and to learn things which have a reputation for being too hard. There was, of course, an emphasis on the hard things being hard because of complexity introduced by things like OOP, C++, etc. But the main purpose always felt like education and enablement. Casey's a great teacher and the videos are very informative.
The Network, on the other hand, was some weird "we want to make stuff by hand", whatever that means. That's fine. But that's not what Casey spent like 7 years doing. He didn't do it "just cuz". Instead, it was to teach and share. That seemed lost on the Network.
As a result, it seemed just like a less toxic Suckless project without the focus on making a new ecosystem. It was just a forum to say, "Hey I made this thing", all the while co-oping the feel-goods from Casey's Handmade Hero.
I get that, but I don't understand why it supports a 501(6) in this case[1]. Just because others have abused it doesn't mean you should give up and even if it is just to send the right signal.
[1] There are many cases where a 501(6) makes sense. I'm strictly arguing the "Handmade Software Foundation" case here. Otherwise it gets complicated quickly.
nextlevelwizard•2h ago
>The number one goal of the Handmade Software Foundation is to support, promote, and sustain the development of Handmade software.
I would love some concrete ideas what this means. My primary concern is that if any money is involved, like stipends for handmade software it will be gamed and there is no way to monitor if LLMs are used or not. In current world it is hard for me not to be cynical when I heard about new good thing, but also they are asking for money and they don’t really tell what they will do with it
anonymous908213•2h ago
> Basically, the thinking goes that Handmade programmers have the technical chops to make amazing software, but don’t always have the aptitude or desire for the many, many other tasks that go into shipping. Payments, licensing, emails, support, design, marketing, testing, the list goes on.
Instead, it sounds like they want to take on the role of a publisher. Perhaps providing publisher-like services without any money changing hands between developer and publisher, with the latter being funded by donations and the former still having to make their own bread, just with some of the development-adjacent work offloaded.
nextlevelwizard•1h ago
Unless of course “handmade” doesn’t mean what I think it does
anonymous908213•1h ago
Edit: Upon re-reading, I actually missed this paragraph the first time.
> Membership will grant you access to a private Discord channel with other members, access to the aforementioned business resources, and possibly more benefits down the line. We have other ideas for Foundation activities, but we don’t want to distract ourselves from our primary goal as we get the Foundation off the ground.
It sounds like you get the publisher-like services in exchange for paying them. So in that sense they probably don't care if you're vetted because you're giving them money? Assuming the membership fee is sufficiently large. They are also talking a lot about "community", in-person meetings, etc. so I assume a close relationship is expected, though.
LowLevelBasket•2h ago
xixixao•1h ago